MGM GRAND GARDEN The Arena was packed with great fighters that night. It was September 27, 2014 and the main event at UFC 178 had a championship at stake. The Las Vegas spotlight also shone in the return of a longtime former champion. There were up to three future bondholders spread across the undercard. One of them would soon take up mixed martial arts.
Conor McGregor was only entering the octagon for the fourth time. He had won his first three UFC matches, and had done so with gusto, intoxicating an expanding fan base with boldness in his fights and at the microphone. He was an upsetting upset, but tonight, he faced a considerable step on the stairs. His opponent was a young climber named Dustin Poirier, who was more experienced with 10 trips inside the UFC cage.
Even at that early stage of his rise in MMA, McGregor had established himself as a polarizing figure. His thundering fists inside the octagon were widely acclaimed, but his blunt mouth was attracting a mixture of bouquets and reaction. There were those who imagined McGregor’s timely accuracy with blows and calls like a rocket to the top of the sport, and there were those who discredited him in a bad mood as nothing more than a promotional darling who would crumble like a Joker card house when the combination just got harder.
McGregor had something to prove that night in Las Vegas, and it came hard and surgically in the beating he gave Poirier. Barely sweating in a knockout in the first round, McGregor convinced everyone, except the most stubborn skeptics, to get into his exaggerated espresso with full steam. The victory over Poirier was rocket fuel.
Six and a half years later, the pair will renew their relationship on Saturday, in the main event of UFC 257, in Abu Dhabi, in the United Arab Emirates. While the circumstances surrounding the two struggles may appear to be entirely different, at their core they are fundamentally the same.
Once again, McGregor faces a litmus test in his career. This is his first fight in over a year, and the most important since an unsuccessful challenge against lightweight champion Khabib Nurmagomedov in 2018. A victory would legitimize the 32-year-old Irishman’s claim of another shot at the belt he once had. A defeat would cause McGregor to fall from the top of the category of fighters in MMA, a sport that revolves around him both in history and in financial results. He would be demoted to a show – a main event show, for sure, because his name will still 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-competitor?
MCGREGOR TEM a bigger impact on the sports world than any MMA fighter in history. It cannot be defined only by bluster and exaggeration. McGregor is the author of some breathtaking performances, most notably a 13 second knockout of featherweight king Jose Aldo in 2015. That was step 1 in McGregor’s march to become the first to reign as champion in two categories of UFC weight simultaneously. It was an achievement that will always shine on your resume.
As was the case at the time of Poirier’s first fight, however, McGregor is now the focal point of a division in perceived reality. One way to see the 2021 McGregor is like a transcendent star who has spent the past few years becoming the richest athlete in MMA by expanding his brand beyond the cage. He did this by facing an unthinkably lucrative boxing match with Floyd Mayweather and launching an extremely popular global whiskey brand. The other perspective of McGregor today is that, with only one victory in the past four years and only two dates inside the cage in his name, he is more of a celebrity than a fighter. An athlete who has lost focus, strayed and is only now becoming serious again, perhaps too late.
The glow of McGregor’s success in the octagon was marred by external problems. He was arrested several times for video transgressions – attacking a bus full of UFC fighters, punching a Dublin pub patron and destroying the phone of a fan trying to take a picture. His protests in preparation for the Mayweather and Nurmagomedov struggles turned into racism and xenophobia. There have also been reports of investigations of sexual assault in Ireland and France. McGregor’s name appeared in the media for the wrong reasons.
If McGregor achieves an impressive victory over Poirier, who is in second place in the lightweight division, in which the first Nurmagomedov announced his retirement, that would instantly remove doubts about McGregor like a fighter that emerged during his last inactive years.
Should McGregor lose? His status as a dairy cow in the UFC is not in danger – he will remain a draw at the box office, no matter what happens this weekend – but a defeat would be a serious blow to his relevance among the 155-pound competitors and could be a disaster of cold water in its competitive fire.
Remember that fire? The last time we saw him really on fire in the UFC, he was consuming Madison Square Garden in New York on November 12, 2016. That was the night that McGregor became the first champion of the promotion by knocking out Eddie Alvarez to add the belt from lightweight to the lightweight handle he already owned. McGregor has already entered this fight like a star, but his performance in the Most Famous Arena in the World highlighted him. While he celebrated at the top of the cage with UFC belts slung over each shoulder, a sight never before seen, McGregor was sitting on top of the world.
Then, the world stopped and turned the other way. We would never see those two pieces of shiny bronze and leather in McGregor’s hands again. He did not defend any of the belts and, in the spring of 2018, was stripped of both for inactivity. By then, he had also deviated to a secondary boxing show and, predictably, was knocked out by Mayweather.
With his glorious unbalanced arrogance, McGregor returned to the octagon in October 2018 and became just another victim of a Nurmagomedov attack. McGregor lacked the courage to involve the champion in a round-trip blockbuster, as many expected to see. McGregor always seemed a step above the rest, capable of more because he expected more from himself and himself. But has McGregor’s magic spread so much in recent years that it has disappeared like a rabbit in a top hat?
SATURDAY NIGHT REDO with Poirier is a formidable challenge, much more than McGregor’s dance last January with a faded Donald Cerrone, which he demolished in 40 seconds. McGregor also quickly dealt with Poirier when they met in 2014, but the 2021 version of the Louisiana lightweight is more mature, tough and dangerous.
It is admirable that McGregor is even leading 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 did so many times during his rise in sport, is risking win your chance to grab the old gold ring.
This weekend will test McGregor’s readiness and put his position in the sport in jeopardy. Being beaten by the indomitable Nurmagomedov is one thing, but dropping the fight against Poirier – an excellent fighter, to be sure, but without the champion aura – would bury McGregor in the hierarchy of title contenders. Would McGregor resolve to pull himself together? He would have it fire? Or would he be attacked by lightweights suddenly encouraged to detect a previously undetected vulnerability?
McGregor is a master of mind games. This has always been your superpower. Their self-confidence is extraordinary, and their talent for intimidating their opponents worked as a blow to fill their heads with anger and undermine any strategy they brought to the cage. McGregor can counteract out-of-control aggression. But if Poirier maintains his posture and cuts the game, why can’t the next one? If McGregor can no longer intimidate, can he still shine at the highest level?
McGregor’s appeal does not depend entirely on him being untouchable in the cage. This helps, of course, because in all sports there is an aura around athletes who cannot be stopped. But much of what makes McGregor’s fight special is contained in pomp and circumstance, the weeks of anticipation growing for the spectacle of him entering the bright stage on fight night. Even if McGregor is evicted from Contenderville on Saturday night, he will continue to reside in a stately mansion on Money Fight Avenue. Your arrogance will always sell.
Still, what made McGregor’s struggles so great is that they meant something more enriching than dollars and cents. The two championship fights he won, and even the one he lost, generated as much heat as the spotlight shining on them. These and almost all of his other nights of fighting were memorable in the greatest possible way – from the fighter’s mastery and artistry to the decibels and joy of the crowd. There is no other fighter in combat sports whose presence raises an arena from the ground and takes it into the stratosphere. This only happens when gold is within McGregor’s reach.
On Saturday night, we’ll find out if the MMA world will still orbit around This one Conor McGregor.