MGM GRAND GARDEN Arena was packed with great fighters that night. That was on September 27, 2014, and UFC 178 put a championship at stake. The spotlight in Las Vegas also shone with the return of a former champion. There are even three future title holders scattered throughout the map. One of them would soon take over mixed martial arts.
Conor McGregor only walked into the Octagon for the fourth time. He won his first three UFC outings, and he did so with dedication, intoxicating a growing fan base with boldness in his fights and at the microphone. He was a disruptor on the rise, but this night he faced a considerable step up the ladder. His opponent was a fellow young climber named Dustin Poirier, who was more seasoned with 10 trips inside the UFC cage.
Already in the early stages of his MMA rise, McGregor established himself as a polarizing figure. His thundering fists inside the Octagon are widely praised, but his stubborn maturity draws a mixture of bouquets and setbacks. There were those who envisioned McGregor’s timely precision with attacks and exclamations as a rocket to the top of the sport, and there were those who grumpily discredited him as not just a pompous, promotional darling who like ‘ a house would not crumble. of the Joker cards once the game got tougher.
McGregor had something to prove that night in Las Vegas, and it came powerful and surgical when he beat Poirier. By barely sweating in a knockout blow in the first round, McGregor lured everyone but the most stubborn skeptics to his full-steam hype expression. The victory over Poirier was rocket fuel.
Six and a half years later, the couple changed their knowledge on Saturday in the main event of UFC 257 in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates. Although the circumstances surrounding the two battles may seem completely different, they are essentially the same.
Once again, McGregor is facing a turning point in his career. This is his first fight in more than a year, and the most important since an unsuccessful challenge against lightweight champion Khabib Nurmagomedov in 2018. A victory will claim the 32-year-old Irishman on another shot at the title belt legalize. A defeat would cause McGregor to tumble from the top tier of fighters in MMA, a sport that revolves around him in both the storyline and the last line. He will be referred to as a spectacle – a major event spectacle, as his name will still sell fights.
But would it be enough for this proud warrior to see his name at the top of the tent, even as a non-participant?
MCGREGOR HET a greater impact on the sports world than any MMA fighter in history. He cannot be defined by just a big hype and a big hype. McGregor wrote some breathtaking performances, most notably a 13-second result from featherweight king Jose Aldo in 2015. It was step 1 in McGregor’s march to simultaneously become the first champion in two UFC weight classes. It was an achievement that will always shine on his resume.
However, as was the case during the first Poirier battle, McGregor is now the focal point of a rift in perceived reality. One way to look at the 2021 McGregor is as a transcendent star who has become the MMA’s richest athlete in recent years by expanding his brand out of the cage. He did this by embarking on an unimaginably lucrative boxing match with Floyd Mayweather and by launching an extremely popular global whiskey brand. The other perspective on today’s McGregor is that with just one win in the last four years and just two in – the – box appointments, he’s more known as a fighter by name. An athlete who has lost focus, strayed and only now becomes serious again, perhaps too late.
The luster of McGregor’s success in the Octagon has been affected by problems out there. He has been arrested several times for violations captured on video – a bus full of UFC fighters attacked, a pub patron in Dublin punched and the phone of a fan trying to take a photo destroyed . His fighting during the build-up to the battles of Mayweather and Nurmagomedov turned into racism and xenophobia. There have also been reports of sexual assault investigations in Ireland and France. McGregor’s name was in the media for all the wrong reasons.
If McGregor can achieve an impressive victory over Poirier, who is second in a lightweight division in which no. 1 Nurmagomedov has announced his retirement, it will immediately delete questions about McGregor. as a fighter which arose during his largely inactive recent years.
If McGregor loses? His status as a UFC cash cow is not in jeopardy – he will remain a counter no matter what happens this weekend, but a defeat will give a serious blow to his interest among 155-pound candidates and could throw a bucket of cold water on his competitive fire.
Do you remember that fire? The last time we actually saw it burn in the UFC, it devoured Madison Square Garden in New York on November 12, 2016. That was the night McGregor became the promotion champion by knocking out Eddie Alvarez to add the lightweight belt. to the featherweight band he already owned. McGregor was already a star in the fight, but his performance in The World’s Most Famous Arena distinguished him. As he celebrated on top of the cage with UFC belts slung over each shoulder, a face never seen before, McGregor sat on top of the world.
Then the world stopped and turned the other way. We would never again see the two brackets of shiny copper and leather in McGregor’s possession. He did not defend any belt, and by the spring of 2018, he was stripped of both for inactivity. By that time, he had also made a turn at the box and was predictably knocked out by Mayweather.
His glorious wobbler returned McGregor to the Octagon in October 2018 and only became another victim of a Nurmagomedov deception. McGregor did not have it in him to involve the champion in a back-and-forth series, as many had expected. McGregor always seemed a step above the rest, more capable because he expected more from himself and for himself. But has McGregor magic spread so thinly over the past few years that it has disappeared like a rabbit in a top hat?
SATURDAY EVENING READY with Poirier is a huge challenge, far more than McGregor’s dance last January with a faded Donald Cerrone, which he broke down in 40 seconds. McGregor also quickly worked with Poirier when they met in 2014, but the 2021 version of the Louisiana lightweight is more mature, more resilient and more dangerous.
It is admirable that McGregor even fights this battle. His star power alone could have qualified him – in the eyes of UFC matchmakers and top counters – at least for a title challenge. McGregor, as he so often did during his rise to the sport, takes a risk earn his chance to grab onto the old gold ring.
This weekend will test McGregor’s readiness and jeopardize his position in the sport. Succeeding through the untamed Nurmagomedov is one thing, but abandoning a fight against Poirier – an excellent fighter, to be sure, but one who does not have the aura of the champion – will bury McGregor in the hierarchy of the title candidates. Would McGregor intend to rebuild himself? Would he have it fire? Or would he gain weight on lightweights who are suddenly encouraged by noticing a vulnerability that was previously unnoticed?
McGregor is a master of brain games. It has always been his superpower. His confidence is not in the rankings, and his instinct to beat his opponents worked like a sharp knock to fill their heads with anger and undermine any strategy they brought into the cage. McGregor can counter aggression out of control. But if Poirier maintains his lead and cuts through the playing team, then why can the next man not? If McGregor can no longer intimidate, can he still shine at the highest level?
McGregor’s appeal is not entirely dependent on him being untouchable in the cage. This helps, of course, because in all sports there is an aura around athletes that is unstoppable. But so much of what makes a McGregor fight special is contained in the splendor and circumstances, the weeks of anticipation have led to the spectacle of entering the bright stage on battle night. Even if McGregor is evicted from Contenderville on Saturday night, he will stay in a majestic mansion in Money Fight Avenue. Its weaker will always sell.
What made McGregor’s fight so great, though, was that they meant something more enriching than dollars and cents. The two championship fights he won, and even the one he lost, all produced as much heat as the spotlight shone on them. The and almost all of his other battle nights were memorable in the greatest possible way – from the mastery and artistry of the warrior to the decibels and the joy of the crowd. There is no other fighter in martial arts whose presence lifts an arena from the ground into the stratosphere. This only happens when the gold is within McGregor’s reach.
Saturday night we find out if the MMA world will still spin that Conor McGregor.