For the first time in his MMA career, Conor McGregor suffered a knockout loss when Dustin Poirier paralyzed him with blows in the second round in the UFC 257 main event.
Subsequently, UFC analysts Michael Bisping and Chael Sonnen addressed what exactly went wrong with McGregor’s performance, although the UFC Hall of Fame and former title contender differed on what exactly happened to the former two-time champion. divisions.
“Conor seemed a little slower than I remembered Conor,” said Sonnen during the UFC 257 post-fight show. “We know, as human beings, you don’t get better at something by not doing it. I give a lot of weight to what Conor said the layoff hurt him.
“I saw that he was wasting time, but I also saw Dustin blocking things, shooting back, chewing on that front leg. Not to mention that not only the fall, but the threat of falling pays dividends ”.
McGregor, who has not fought since January 2020, made no excuses for the defeat while paying homage to Poirier for a job well done. The result was very different from the first fight, six years earlier, when McGregor dispatched Poirier in less than two minutes.
This time, Poirier had McGregor limping on one leg after attacking the Irishman with a series of brutal kicks in the calf before mounting a series of violent punches that led to the knockout.
Sonnen believes that long periods of inactivity have plagued McGregor since he became the first fighter in UFC history to be champion in two divisions, and really came back to bite him.
“You can come in and train, you can even get up and put those miles on,” explained Sonnen. “I believe that Conor McGregor worked hard, but there is a different intensity. There is a different stress when you are talking about competition. See if we have any myths as an industry in 2020, is that we had Conor McGregor saying, ‘I would like to fight four times’, and we allow him to fight once.
“There are other competitions that the guys enter. They will enter a grappling competition, they will take something just to be in a hurry, just to feel those vibrations, just to be in the back, do that warm-up, sleep in a hotel, weigh. Conor did none of those things. “
It is impossible to deny that McGregor has been out for long periods since 2016. He has only competed in the UFC three times since winning the lightweight title, going 1-2 in that period, while also suffering a 10th round defeat by TKO to Floyd Mayweather in a boxing match in 2017.
Although time away from the octagon certainly doesn’t help, Bisping believes that McGregor really faced the same enemy that hindered him throughout his UFC career.
“What I saw here was Conor’s lack of conditioning, again, showing his ugly face,” said Bisping. “I hate to say that. Dustin Poirier had the perfect game plan – get into the clinch, try to knock him down – and he did it perfectly. At the start of the fight, Conor looked sharp. He looked like the usual Conor. Hitting his left hand. , looking confident, moving forward, but then when you play a fighter you’re not used to, who has a history of tiredness, that’s what we saw. We saw the change in facial expression. We saw confidence change and when the tide started to turn , Dustin Poirier saw the opening, put him to sleep, just a tremendous night for Dustin Poirier.
“While the stakes were high and Dustin was succeeding, he was leaving openings that in the past I think McGregor would have taken advantage of. But, like I said, he was starting to get a little tired and we saw what happened. “
While there are several opinions about how much rust really influences fighters who come back on vacation, Bisping looked back on his own previous experiences with Georges St-Pierre after he returned from almost four years away and won the UFC middleweight championship.
“Georges St-Pierre got off the couch after three and a half years and choked me unconscious,” said Bisping. “Many people say that rust is a mental thing and it is. It is a mental thing.
“If Conor stayed at the gym and did everything he said, it wouldn’t be a factor. The reality is that tonight he went there and was defeated by Dustin Poirier. There is no shame in that. “
If there was one thing they agreed on, it was that Poirier deserves credit for a job well done. The former interim champion executed a game plan that left McGregor on crutches after the event, thanks to calf kicks that helped define the knockout in the second round.
“At the end of the day you get dressed, two people enter the cage, Dustin was the best man tonight,” said Bisping. “You can look for excuses. You can try to dissect it. The definitive answer tonight, the best man won the fight. “