Old Westbury, Long Island, NY ….

Rory McIlroy admits he is intrigued by fellow Irishman Conor McGregor ahead of his title fight showdown on Saturday in Las Vegas.

McGregor faces fierce rival Floyd Mayweather in their historic showdown in the gambling capital of the world and with Irish punters desperate to see the 29-year old McGregor crowned undisputed lightweight champ.

McIlroy is facing his own heavyweight contest starting Thursday on New York’s Long Island and needing a Northern Trust success to end a near 52-week winless run.

But then McIlroy is also rooting for McGregor to deliver the knockout punch to the undefeated Yank.

Rory McIlroy and Niall Horan party with Conor McGregor after his UFC 2012 victory.

“Now that I’m off Twitter and social media, all I do is watch YouTube videos of Conor McGregor,” said McIlroy.

“I’m intrigued as Conor talks a good game. If you just listen to his press conferences and what he says, you would think that this guy, he’s the one with the 50-0 boxing record.

“It’s amazing. I’m a big admirer of him. He talks about visualization and the law of attraction and all this stuff that he believes in it and he vocalizes it, and he has the courage to say what he thinks.

“I’m a believer in that stuff, and I’m a big advocate of that.

“And some of the stuff he does wouldn’t be my cup of tea, but he believes 100 percent in himself and he believes he’s going to go out there on Saturday night and shock the world.

“So, I’m interested just to see how it all plays out, but I just fear that they do all this trash-talking and they go behind the scenes and they are having a laugh and thinking: I can’t believe we are talking all this public for a ride.

“We are all buying into it and they are like, can you believe these people believe this.

“I just hope it doesn’t turn into it and I hope it’s not in any way fixed. It’s amazing, like we were talking about, imagine McGregor knocks him out in the first couple of rounds.

“They would get even more for the rematch. The rematch would be even bigger.

“So it’s just — I just don’t know what that zero on Mayweather’s record is worth, and that’s the thing. That’s his legacy.

“If he goes down and lies down for ten seconds at some point in that, you know, is that worth making an extra few 100 million? That’s sort of up to him.

“Yeah, as you can see, I’m very knowledgeable on it. (Laughter) yeah, I’m interested about it. I’m intrigued. We’ll see how it goes.”