Aging Mac Will Fight Until He’s ‘Laid Out Flat’

Conor McGregor is taking his career “to the grave.”

But don’t expect cautious Connie to be mixing it up with fresh-faced bruisers who have something to prove. Not when there are enough existing rivalries featuring opponents in his age range, like Nate Diaz and Dustin Poirier, just to name a few.

Unless “Notorious,” who turns 36 in July, is smelling salts in his oft-delayed UFC comeback.

“Mike Tyson now is fighting Jake Paul. He fought Roy Jones, also,” McGregor told TNT Sports (transcribed by Farah Hannoun). “There you go: That’s an older guy. When he was fighting Roy Jones Jr., something that really stuck out to me was he was asked – Roy Jones Jr., also an aged guy, retired for so long. Why? Recalibrate your competition. There’s a reason that in jiu-jitsu tournaments there’s like the veteran division and all this. So I don’t really feel like I could ever call it a day to it until I’m laid out flat, and that’s it.”

I guess he does understand it after all.

“In a box and going down into the ground, that’s when I’ll call it a day,” McGregor continued. “Something that really struck me with Mike Tyson was he was asked in an interview around the Roy Jones Jr. fight, what do you think Cus D’Amato – who was his mentor and coach – what do you think Cus D’Amato would say to you after all these years. Why come back now? And what Tyson said was, what Cus would say to me is, ‘What took you so long?’ That really hit me.”

“I’m aware that is present, that feeling and that thing whatever it is, but I’m also aware that rest, recuperation, recalibration – I’m not going to be 40-odd and looking at the 19-year-old wonder kid from wherever he’s from,” McGregor said. “Even though they might be calling me out. Look at all my potential opponents I have. I have gangs of opponents that I have history with – trilogies, secondary fights, fresh fights even. These are all similar age to me. So if these people are similar age to me and I have the audience’s interest – which I do, who’s to say these fights won’t take place whenever they’ll take place. It’s to the grave. It’s to the motherf*cking grave.”

No word yet on when McGregor will make his return to the Octagon. “Notorious” is loosely attached to a Michael Chandler fight but UFC CEO Dana White has been noncommittal on the showdown, which is already a year past its expiration date.

It’s complicated.