Conor McGregor is knuckling down ahead of his return to the cage after almost a year away from the UFC octagon.
The Dublin fighter announced his retirement for the third time over the summer - citing frustrations with UFC bosses as one of his reasons for sensationally quitting.
It didn't last long and talks over a January 23 clash with Dustin Poirier are believed to be going in the right direction.
American ace Poirier is entering a training camp in Florida, while McGregor, 32, is ramping up preparations with a private camp in Portugal.
The Crumlin cage-fighter has flown training partners, coaches and family members to the Algarve as he gears up for his return to action in the new year.
It is believed McGregor took three training partners with him to Portugal for prep work in a bid to cover a variety of fight styles.
Coaches John Kavanagh and Owen Roddy have landed on Portuguese soil and are helping their star fighter as he embarks on a journey to wrestle back the lightweight title after the division was blown wide open by Khabib Nurmagomedov's shock retirement.
McGregor last met Poirier in 2014 during his thrilling rise to superstardom and finished 'The Diamond' within the first round in Las Vegas.
The Dubliner famously went on to become a two-weight world champion while Poirier, now 31, eventually bounced back from that defeat to become one of the top fighters in the UFC roster.
He is ranked No 7 in the latest UFC pound-for-pound rankings, while McGregor, who demolished veteran Donald Cerrone last January, is ranked No 11.
Posing with an airport pint yesterday, Straight Blast Gym head coach Kavanagh tweeted: "Last Guinness for a good while. Time to join the camp camp with the champ champ."
McGregor admitted earlier this year that he let his guard down in the build-up to his 2018 loss to Khabib, but now seems intent on proving a point in his latest cage comeback.
In a scathing response to his critics, he claimed that vocal fans were projecting their 'insecurities' through the criticism of his decision to fight Cerrone.
"You know you go online and you'll see some guy like 'Hey, you only f*****g fought Cerrone' like imagine some guy saying that about a legend," McGregor told Parimatch.
"The way the fans kind of try to downplay who you fought or something or say 'You haven't fought this guy yet' or you ain't done that.
"If you think of it like a mirror, that person who's writing this or saying this, he himself is projecting his own insecurities because that person wouldn't have fought anyone on planet Earth.
"So he's saying, 'You ain't doing this, you ain't doing that' when really it's in his own thoughts that he ain't done this or ain't done that on any scale, so it's like a mirror.
"You know as long as your own self is right, everything else around you will become right. And that's it."
