Notorious - The Life and Fights of Conor McGregor

by Jack Slack

THE GODFATHER OF IRISH MMA

As much as every drunk thinks he could have a good crack at a professional boxing career, his fighting is improved by alcohol about as much as his driving and singing.

As much as every drunk thinks he could have a good crack at a professional boxing career, his fighting is improved by alcohol about as much as his driving and singing.

The most basic level of strategy for open position engagements sees both men attempting to check their opponent’s lead hand, stepping their lead foot outside their opponent’s to take themselves past the opponent’s lead shoulder, and lining their rear hand up with the chin before throwing the straight down the pipe.

For much of his early career he was a clumsy brawler with a powerhouse left hand and the odd classy counter amid a storm of swings.

Many, many MMA fighters have the habit of dropping their hands after missing punches or falling short, and of leading with their face when forced to cover a great distance. If they commit these cardinal sins as they chase McGregor, he uncorks the left hand on them as they move into the space he has vacated.

In the space of a year-and-a-half, McGregor had turned his career around. Formerly a 4-2 knockout artist who seemed just as likely to be submitted in under a minute, his record now ran a respectable 10-2, with none of his defeated foes having made it to the final bell.

Natural ability and passion accounted for a good part of that, but being able to train twice a day without worrying about work was something that even many fighters in the UFC at the time were not able to do.

If you want to see exactly what makes Conor McGregor remarkable as a martial artist condensed into one round, the Buchinger fight is the film to study.

But the uppercut serves more often as a setup or a deterrent. When a fighter is crouched, the uppercut can return him to an upright position. Frequent use of the uppercut can make a fighter who frequently slips and weaves under punches abandon the method that usually makes him so elusive to the other strikes in the boxing arsenal.

While the population of the Republic of Ireland is just under five million, and the entire Emerald Isle contains around seven million people, around thirty-five million Americans identify themselves as having Irish roots. That is a powerful demographic.

Each of these men boxed their way out of the ghetto, but none compared to Sullivan as a force for change in society. In the nineteenth and early twentieth century, when the general attitude towards the Irish, and to Catholics in particular, remained sour, Sullivan was lauded in the papers as ‘The Noblest Roman of Them All’. Black, Irish, Italian – fighting has always been the greatest means of social mobility.

In dealing with Holloway’s height and reach, McGregor found the side kick to be an excellent weapon, one that prevented Holloway from stepping in on him. This was confirmation of one of Bruce Lee’s theories: the low line side kick’s value is like that of the jab in boxing – in that it is the longest weapon and closest to the opponent – but has the added bonus of being aimed at a nearer target than the opponent’s head.

the key to the science of striking is in forcing adjustments from the opponent and immediately capitalising on the changes they have made.

In his memoir Kavanagh recalls wanting McGregor to stay in the US until he was given a clean bill of health, but McGregor’s appearance at the opening of his mentor’s new headquarters reflected the remarks he made throughout his career about loyalty. McGregor had started with Kavanagh, and whether he was a failed plumber or an emerging star, he planned to continue repaying the kindness and encouragement of his friend and mentor.

the effects of it. Think of driving your car into the back of someone as you both speed down a main road, and then think of a head-on collision – that is the difference between moving into a strike and being hit while moving away from it.

Brilliant technique and tactics only hold up as long as discipline does. The first drain on a fighter’s discipline is fatigue – there aren’t many other endurance sports with so many strategic considerations – but the second test of discipline is being hurt. It is frightening to feel that pain, but more importantly it throws a fighter back to his instincts. Fight or flight. Some will run wildly around the cage or ring and others will bite down on their mouthpiece and start lashing out like a wounded tiger.

McGregor once again broke his character straight after the bout.

two of the UFC’s better pay-per-view stars were Chael Sonnen and Tito Ortiz – smothering wrestlers who rarely finished a fight and could still get people to tune into their fights based on their behaviour outside the cage.

‘My first paychecks, I just wanted to get myself a hell of a lot of nice clothes and I got my mother something, I got my coach something, I spoiled my girlfriend.’ McGregor continued: ‘I got a 645i BMW, and I got my girlfriend Dee a Range Rover, but they were probably stupid things.’

it is extremely difficult to completely avoid the clinch. You can see this in any boxing or kickboxing

Siver looked irritated and McGregor appeared raring to go, towering over the stocky German. McGregor extended a fist to touch gloves with Siver, a concession that all the talk had simply been done to hype the fight, but Siver was having none of it.

The Irishman stood to free Siver, then made a dash for the fence. Vaulting over the cage, McGregor ran to the audience. Dee Devlin, turned out immaculately in a glistening scarlet dress, rose to meet her long-time partner – but that wasn’t McGregor’s intention. Standing next to Devlin, understated in a leather jacket, was José Aldo, the featherweight great and face of the division.

Attempting to react and counter in exchanging range is difficult, takes years to get proficient at, rapidly fades as a fighter’s reactions slow and can even fail him simply because his timing just isn’t ‘on’ that night. Often the best defence is simply to skip back and re-establish the distance.

one of the cardinal sins of boxing is backing up on a straight line. The second step is always cut at an angle to begin circling away from the ropes. Each retreating step a fighter takes puts him nearer to the ropes, where he can be trapped. A double or triple jab from the opponent and if your only defence is retreating you will soon be on the ropes with nowhere to run. Distance is significantly greater in sports that allow kicks than in boxing, but the principle remains the same – back up too readily and you can run yourself onto the fence and into a whole mess of trouble.

Aldo got the call up to the big leagues from World Extreme Cagefighting as a tune up for featherweight legend, Alexandre Franca ‘Pequeno’ Nogueira. Over one-and-a half rounds, José Aldo made Alexandre Franca Nogueira look like a fool. Aldo’s performance did exactly what fight fans hate: it screamed in the face of tradition. There are no points for time served in fighting: no one will go easier on you because of your reputation, and that is what Nogueira was finding against Aldo.

If you don’t talk trash and you can’t or won’t finish fights, you have lost your two main attractions as a fighter.

fighters often build their offence on techniques that they find troubling to deal with themselves.

for Aldo versus McGregor, the UFC booked its first ‘world tour’. From 20 to 31 March 2015, Aldo and McGregor appeared at both open and closed events for fans and media across five countries. Starting in Aldo’s hometown of Rio de Janeiro, the two travelled to Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Boston, New York, Toronto, London and finally Dublin.

in 2016 Tony McGregor gave Conor perhaps the highest praise he could hope for when he reflected: ‘He was able to prove me wrong, which has made me so proud.’

he didn’t want to be there, and so was in full-on promotional mode, or as McGregor would say ‘all business’.

The way he talked, the way he acted, he seemed to have the answer and that intangible ‘star power’. When the UFC dragged all of its champions and the biggest booked match-ups on stage for the ‘Go Big’ press conference, McGregor dominated the time on the microphone, picking fights with anyone and everyone.

The Irishman continued that a fight with Conor McGregor was a cause for celebration: ‘When you fight me it’s a cause for celebration. You ring back home, you ring your wife. “Baby, we done it! We’re rich, baby! Conor McGregor made us rich! Break out the red panties!”’

The objective is not to make a fighter scared or worried, it is to make him fight harder. Make him want to win so badly that he doesn’t fight smart, he fights on emotion. And fighting on emotion against a top-quality counter-puncher, against whom feints and ringcraft will always be key, will get a fighter knocked out more quickly than anything else.

McGregor himself played into this by being one of the few fighters to give interviews immediately after the weigh-ins. This is when most fighters are desperate to drink, eat and lie down alone. Weight cuts play havoc with the hormones and emotions of fighters, and a particularly arduous but successful weight cut can move even a toughened world beater to tears. But Conor McGregor would stand with Ariel Helwani and answer questions in a slower state of mind than his usual self, because he recognised the value of staying in the media and that this was half the work in the fight game.

Silva used diuretics in his attempt to make the weight. Whatever the case, he suffered a stroke and died just hours before he was due to weigh in.

But dos Anjos was an anomaly. Rather than simply swarming his opponents and attempting to overwhelm them, he developed a pressure fighting game. He cooked opponents. Pressure is about a fighter’s presence and is more about the threat of punches than the ones that are thrown. Much of the pressure fighting approach is down to ring cutting, something that Conor McGregor himself is rather well versed in, often forcing his opponents to the fence with his footwork alone.

McGregor the company man was now signing his announcements ‘McGregor Promotions’, in a manner that implied he was co-promoting with the UFC, though this was obviously not true.

most members of the audience would have recalled John Kavanagh’s snappy pre-fight line: ‘You’ve seen Conor on salads… Now watch what he’s like on steak.’

As McGregor always insisted, he was there to whoop ass for piles of cash,

When asked whether his recreational indulgences threatened to get in the way of his career after his victory over Takanori Gomi was overturned, Diaz responded: ‘On the contrary, my fighting career is getting in the way of my marijuana smoking.’

McGregor looked like a man whose entire worldview had crumbled.

he built himself up on the money and ill will of his detractors.

Every example of successful promotion in the history of combat sports has relied on one of three factors: the heat from a smack-talking heel, a reputation for brutal knockout victories, and national (or occasionally racial) pride. Conor McGregor – the trash-talking, concussion-dispensing Irishman – had all three going for him.

He was a genius of self-promotion, and one of the few fighters to appreciate fighting as a business; plus, he was laser-focused on prize money and buyrates.

Research over recent years has shown that headgear does little to stop trauma to the brain – in fact, the additional weight of the headgear in boxing or helmet in American football can simply provide more weight to the head as it is knocked around.

The Irishman had scored two knockdowns on the iron-jawed Diaz, but he hadn’t learned to punch any harder between fights. This was the fistic science at its most pure: attacking openings, forcing adaptations and striking again into the unguarded spots left by these defensive adaptations.

As the fight was waved off, Diaz stood from inside McGregor’s guard and offered his hand. McGregor didn’t hesitate for a second, taking the help of the American in standing up. Smiling, they embraced and exchanged affectionate back slaps. Drenched in claret, both men returned to their corners, happy with their output and anticipating the judges’ decision. Not only was it a show of mutual respect, it also reflected that the two were simply playing the game. It is very hard to hate another person when the smack talk you exchange is going to make both of you filthy rich.

It was becoming a theme that Alvarez would come out slow, get dropped with a punch, and only then pull ahead with his science and power. He was one of those fighters who needed to taste his own blood to realise that he was in a fight.

He also realised that while it should be the job of the promoter to promote, a fighter who can do the advertising for himself is far more valuable than a dozen quiet, humble, world champions.