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GRAND JARDIN MGM Arena was filled with great fighters that night. It was September 27, 2014, and the UFC 178 headline had a championship on the line. The Las Vegas spotlight was also shining on the return of a long-missing former champion. There were even three future title holders dotted throughout the sub-card. One of them will soon resume mixed martial arts.
Conor McGregor entered the Octagon for only the fourth time. He’d won his first three UFC outings, and he had done so with flying colors, intoxicating an expanding fan base with courage in his fights and on the mic. He was a burgeoning disruptor, but that night he faced a big step up the ladder. His opponent was a young climber named Dustin Poirier, who was more experienced with 10 trips inside the UFC cage.
Even at this early stage in his rise in MMA, McGregor had established himself as a polarizing figure. Its thundering fists inside the Octagon were widely acclaimed, but its hard-hitting mouth drew a mixture of bouquets and backlash. There were those who envisioned McGregor’s well-timed precision with rocket-like strikes and calls at the top of the sport, and there were those who grumpily discredited him as nothing more than a excited promotional darling who would crumble. like a house. Joker cards once matchmaking gets more difficult.
McGregor had something to prove that night in Las Vegas, and it came with force and surgery in the beating he dealt Poirier. Barely sweating in a first-round knockout, McGregor persuaded all but the most stubborn skeptics to embark on his full-steamed express hype. The victory over Poirier was rocket fuel.
Six and a half years later, the duo will reconnect on Saturday at the main event of UFC 257 in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates. While the circumstances surrounding the two fights may seem totally different, they are basically the same.
Once again, McGregor faces a career pivot test. This is his first fight in over a year, and his biggest since an unsuccessful challenge against lightweight champion Khabib Nurmagomedov in 2018. A victory would legitimize the 32-year-old’s claim to another shooting title belt he once owned. A loss would bring McGregor down from the top tier of fighters in MMA, a sport that revolves around him in both storyline and results. He would be relegated to a show – a main show, of course, as his name will always sell fights.
But would it be enough for this proud fighter to see his name at the top of the marquee even as a non-participant?
MCGREGOR HAS HAD a bigger impact on the sports world than any MMA fighter in history. It can’t be defined by bluster and oversized hype alone. McGregor wrote some jaw-dropping performances including a 13-second knockout of longtime featherweight king Jose Aldo in 2015. It was the first step in McGregor’s march to becoming the first to reign as champion in two UFC weight classes simultaneously. It was an accomplishment that will always shine on his resume.
As was the case in Poirier’s first fight, however, McGregor is now the focal point of a split in perceived reality. One way to view the McGregor of 2021 is as a transcendent star who has spent the last few years becoming MMA’s richest athlete by expanding his brand beyond the cage. He did this by participating in an incredibly lucrative boxing match with Floyd Mayweather and launching an extremely popular global whiskey brand. The other perspective on McGregor today is that, with just one win in the past four years and only two dates in the cage in his name, he’s more of a celebrity than a fighter. An athlete who has lost his focus, has lost his way and has only now become serious again, perhaps too late.
The brilliance of McGregor’s success in the Octagon has been tarnished by outside issues. He has been arrested on multiple occasions for filmed transgressions – attacking a bus full of UFC fighters, hitting a Dublin pub boss and destroying a fan’s phone trying to take a photo. His rants during the escalation of the Mayweather and Nurmagomedov fights turned into racism and xenophobia. Sexual assault investigations have also been reported in Ireland and France. McGregor’s name has been in the media for all the wrong reasons.
If McGregor can pull off an impressive victory over Poirier, who is ranked No.2 in a lightweight division in which No.1 Nurmagomedov has announced his retirement, it would instantly clear questions about McGregor. as a fighter that have arisen in his last largely inactive years.
If McGregor loses? His UFC cash cow status is not in jeopardy – there will remain a draw no matter what this weekend – but a loss would deal a serious blow to his relevance among the 155-pound contenders and could throw a bucket. of cold water on his competition fire.
Do you remember that fire? The last time we saw him really on fire at the UFC, he was consuming Madison Square Garden in New York on November 12, 2016. It was the night McGregor became the class’s first champion by knocking out Eddie Alvarez. to add the light belt. to the featherweight strap he already had. McGregor has entered this fight like a star before, but his performance at the world’s most famous arena sets him apart. As he celebrated atop the cage with UFC belts on each shoulder, a sight never seen before, McGregor sat on top of the world.
Then the world stopped and turned the other way. We would never see those two pieces of shiny brass and leather in McGregor’s possession again. He did not defend any belts and in the spring of 2018 he was stripped of both for inactivity. By this time he had also made a detour to a boxing show and, as you might expect, was knocked out by Mayweather.
His glorious boast derailed, McGregor returned to the Octagon in October 2018 and became just another victim of a Nurmagomedov mayhem. McGregor didn’t want to engage the champion in a back-and-forth blockbuster, as many expected. McGregor had always seemed a cut above the rest, capable of more because he expected more of himself and for himself. But has McGregor’s magic spread so much in recent years that it’s gone like a bunny in a top hat?
SATURDAY NIGHT REDO with Poirier is a formidable challenge, far more than McGregor’s dance last January with a faded Donald Cerrone, which he demolished in 40 seconds. McGregor also did Poirier’s quick job when they met in 2014, but the 2021 version of the Louisiana lightweight is more mature, resilient and dangerous.
It’s admirable that McGregor even takes this fight. His star power alone could have qualified him – in the eyes of UFC matchmakers and bean counters, at least – for a title challenge. McGregor, as he so often did during his rise in the sport, takes the risk of to win his chance to grab the old gold ring.
This weekend will test McGregor’s readiness and put his reputation in the sport at risk. Getting beaten by the indomitable Nurmagomedov is one thing, but giving up a fight against Poirier – an excellent fighter, admittedly, but lacking the aura of the champion – would bury McGregor in the hierarchy of title contenders. Does McGregor have the resolve to rebuild himself? Would he have that Fire? Or would he fall prey to lightweights suddenly emboldened by spotting a previously undetected vulnerability?
McGregor is a master of mind games. It has always been his superpower. His self-confidence is out of this world, and his flair for beating his opponents has worked like a clean jab to fill their heads with rage and undermine any strategy they have brought into the cage. McGregor can counter an out of control aggression. But if Poirier maintains his composure and makes his way into the game, why not the next one? If McGregor can no longer intimidate, can he still shine at the highest level?
McGregor’s appeal doesn’t entirely depend on whether he’s untouchable in the cage. This helps, of course, because in all sports there is an aura around athletes who are unstoppable. But much of what makes a McGregor fight special is contained in the pomp and circumstance, with weeks of anticipation developing at the sight of him stepping into the bright scene on fight night. Even though McGregor is kicked out of Contenderville on Saturday night, he will continue to reside in a stately mansion on Money Fight Avenue. His swagger will always sell.
Yet what made McGregor’s fights so great was that they meant something more rewarding than dollars and cents. The two championship fights he won, and even the one he lost, all produced as much heat as the spotlight shining on them. Those nights and pretty much all of his other fighting nights were memorable in the greatest possible way – from the fighter’s mastery and artistry to the decibels and crowd cheer. There is no other fighter in combat sports whose presence lifts an arena off the ground and into the stratosphere. This only happens when gold is within McGregor’s grasp.
Saturday night we find out if the MMA world will still be orbiting it this Conor McGregor.
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