On Saturday night, Conor McGregor will make his return to the octagon for the first time in five years when he takes on Max Holloway at UFC 329 in Las Vegas.It comes just over 18 months after the 37-year-old lost a civil case and was ordered to pay €248,000 ($257,000, £206,000) in damages to his accuser Nikita Hand, who alleged that McGregor raped her in a Dublin hotel room in December 2018 – a charge McGregor denies. He was later told to pay costs too.The case ended up in a civil claim at Ireland’s high court after the Irish director of public prosecutions (DPP) twice told Hand in 2020 that they would not prosecute as there was “no reasonable prospect of conviction” based on the standard of proof required for a criminal case being “beyond reasonable doubt.” In a civil case, the standard is lower, based on the balance of probabilities.In court, the jury heard evidence from paramedic Eithne Scully, who examined Hand on the night of the incident and said she hadn’t “seen someone so bruised, with that intensity of bruising”.After the finding against him, McGregor appealed the decision of the civil jury on the grounds that his lawyers believed his answers to police during interviews should not have been put before the jury.His barrister also argued that a question on the “issue paper” given to the jury to help them decide their verdict should have been worded differently. The issue paper asked the jurors if McGregor had assaulted Ms Hand. McGregor’s lawyers argued it should have specified “sexual assault” rather than “assault”.In July 2025, three senior judges at the Court of Appeal in Dublin dismissed the appeal on all grounds.A statement from McGregor’s lawyer sent to The Athletic stated: “(McGregor’s) innocence is vindicated by virtue that there was a thorough and impartial police investigation which failed to establish any wrongdoing.“The Director of Public Prosecution in Dublin took the unprecedented steps to have the Garda evidential files reviewed twice by expert senior counsel and, on both occasions, found no basis to charge my client with any criminal offense. To be deemed liable in a civil claim should never equate to criminal guilt and circumvent due process.”Speaking outside court after the ruling was given, Hand said the appeal process had “re-traumatised” her “over and over again.”“What happened has had a huge impact on me,” she said. “To every survivor out there, I know how hard it is, but please, don’t be silenced. You deserve to be heard, you also deserve justice. Today, I can finally move on and try to heal.”Conor McGregor is set to fight again (Ed Mulholland/Zuffa LLC)One year on from his appeal being dismissed, McGregor is back in the spotlight, doing what he says he was “born to do”.“Hallelujah, the Mac is back,” he said on stage at the UFC media day this week, before taking questions from assembled media (some addressing him as “Champ”) on his thoughts about the man he’ll fight on Saturday, his apparent religious awakening, his “cultural relevance”, and the position of the UFC in 2026.Some 13 minutes in came a different question.“Conor, can you understand why some people feel you do not deserve this platform, given the court case two years ago?”McGregor exhaled deeply into the microphone before answering: “I’m an innocent man, and I’ll stand for my innocence until the day I go out.”He went on to say it’s a situation he is “still fighting” and that “there is a reason it didn’t go where it went and it went to a civil trial”.As one of the UFC’s most globally famous names, McGregor’s return has been hotly anticipated for the past few years, and the announcement that he would be fighting on UFC 329 generated headlines worldwide. “After a punishing battle of recovery and renewal,” read an interview with him on the UFC website earlier this month, “McGregor is set to make his comeback.”Following a series of quotes from the Irishman about his “difficult few years with the injury recovery” — referring to the broken leg he suffered in his last fight, an injury-TKO loss to Dustin Poirier at UFC 264 — the piece addressed what it termed “some of his issues away from the sport”.“Fame has its pitfalls,” McGregor told the interviewer. “You better move carefully in this world, for sure. Probably even more so now.”McGregor said he had been through “some treatment, a lot of self-reflective work” to get himself into a better place ahead of his return to competition.