Conor McGregor loses huge $500,000 bet on Francis Ngannou's MMA fight

Conor McGregor lost $500,000 after backing Francis Ngannou to lose by knockout on his return to the cage.

Ngannou was competing in MMA for the first time in almost three years when he took on PFL heavyweight champion Renan Ferreira in Riyadh on Saturday night. And McGregor, who himself has not fought for over three years, took to social media before the fight started to boast of backing Ferreira to the tune of half a million dollars.

McGregor had said when posting his bet: "Hello, folks, The Notorious here. Fight night, fight night, fight night... the Mac is back with his winning bets. I have a 100 per cent winning ratio on these bet. Ngannou is losing by KO tonight. 12/5 the Brazilian is to knock him out and I’m putting half a million on it and I’m going to win back $1.7million. That’s it. It’s a ruthless business and I’m a ruthless man."

But Ngannou needed less than four minutes to KO Ferreira, taking the fight to the ground and finishing it with a barrage of blows to leave the referee with no chance but to step in and save the Brazilian from further punishment.

McGregor recently celebrated a spate of winning bets, winning over $8m in a single week over the summer when he backed Spain to win Euro 2024. The Spaniards' win over England in the final won the former two-weight champion $1m while Argentina's triumph over in the Copa America final netted him $365,000.

And an incredible treble of those two teams to win, and Carlos Alcaraz to lift the Wimbledon trophy saw him bank $4m. Finally, McGregor backed old rival Nate Diaz to beat Jorge Masvidal in their fight, which he duly did to net the Dubliner $1.6m. And earlier this month, McGregor won $200,000 from a $1m bet on UFC light-heavyweight champion Alex Pereria who stopped Khalil Rountree to retain his belt.

McGregor perhaps took the view that Ngannou would struggle from ring rust in his first MMA fight since he defended his UFC heavyweight title against Ciryl Gane in 2022, and opted to switch to the boxing ring where he was edged out by and then blasted out by .

McGregor, meanwhile, will be closing in on four years without a fight by the time he makes his anticipated return to the UFC next year. He had been due to take on Michael Chandler this summer but pulled out with a broken toe just two weeks before the bout in Las Vegas.

Chandler lost patience with the delay in rescheduling the bout and will instead rematch Charles Oliveira in New York at UFC 309 next month. McGregor claimed last weekend that he would instead return against Dan Hooker in Saudi Arabia in February but no deal has been struck.