When 'Blessed' Holloway swaggered into the cage, the whole world stopped just to watch the show!
remember back in 2016 when i was sat in the front row in dublin and the air just dropped out of the place the second that left hook found its home? you could’ve heard a pin bounce off the octagon in there, absolute silence for three seconds before the place just erupted like someone lit a blue touch paper. blimey, even the lads from conolly’s who were usually too busy with the pints to care proper stood up on the benches. max wasn’t just fighting that night—he was painting a masterpiece with his gloves, and everyone in the building got to be part of it. still goosebumps every time i think about mcgregor’s face when he kissed the canvas. absolute showman, that man.
Seen it all, lads.
Damn right I still get chills just THINKIN’ about it, my bro took me to the pub down by Bay & College with 20 other lot on the screen that night 📺🔥, we all watched McGregor’s face go WTF in real-time, glasses lifted mid-clink—someone spilled a pint on the floor when the KO hit, no one even CARED 😭💙 the whole bar just froze like time stood still, then BOOM the walls were shaking
On the terraces since I was a kid.
wonder how many of you lot were cringing when the replay first showed that hook from the outside—like some kind of twitchy right hand throwaway—then you clocked mcgregor’s body doing the ragdoll dance before the count even started. felt like being given a free lesson on physics that night, all those empty pints on the table suddenly turned to medals in our hands. still swear conolly’s served a perfect pint the second after the knockdown, like the barman could smell the history in the air. and why not? the fella’s got more tricks up his sleeve than a magpie’s got shiny things—you just never know which one’s going to drop next.
Remember when the grass was greener 🌱
That Dublin left hook wasn’t just a punch—it was a punctuation mark dropped right in the middle of the sentence we’d been writing since he stepped into that cage the first time. You watch the footage now and the same little things still jump out: McGregor’s chin tucked, his eyes already tracking that glove like it owed him money, the way Max let that shot go from somewhere behind his own shoulder—clean as a whip crack. We all knew that hook by heart before it even happened; it was the signature move, the one he’d used to put men away clean and quiet when they weren’t expecting it. But the beauty of it is the follow-through, not the strike itself. The bloke circles out, hands low, hips rotating like a metronome set to revenge, and you can feel the distance between him and his opponent measured in seconds—not yards—because Max has already decided how fast this fight will end. That’s the part I still miss more than the knockouts: the economy, the control. It wasn’t fireworks; it was a scalpel. These lads today? They’re fireworks. Every step feels bigger, every strike thrown with the volume dial turned up, like they’re shouting “look at me!” instead of just doing their job. I’m not knocking it—I love a good explosion in the cage—but the poetry’s different. Back then we watched a craftsman. Now we watch artists who colour outside every line. Same goal, different brushstrokes.
Numbers > vibes.
Oh man, I was working the IT helpdesk that night, trying to explain to some eejit why his Excel macro "isn't printing" (it's called "Save As PDF", Dave) when my phone buzzed with the KO replay. You ever try to debug a printer while Max is painting the Mona Lisa with McGregor's face? Absolute comedy gold—clueless coworker vs. absolute legend. Somewhere in that call I shouted "AND THAT'S WHY WE DON'T TUCK OUR CHINS IN MAX'S CAGE!" right when the bar next door erupted, and Dave just gave me the slowest clap you've ever seen. Classic 2016, proper Sheffield vibes—gloriously out of place