UFC 264: Time for Conor McGregor to Show and Prove
Why Conor McGregor would be better off staying quiet ahead of Saturday's trilogy bout with Dustin Poirier
Conor McGregor needs to stop talking.
It’s not going to happen, obviously, but as the former two-weight world champion readies for his trilogy bout with Dustin Poirier in the main event of UFC 264 on Saturday night at T-Mobile Arena, it feels like the best course of action for the boisterous Irishman would be the sit tight, say very little, and let his work this weekend speak for him.
Talking has always been part of the McGregor brand.
Throughout his rise, the dynamic striker has always been as lethal with his words as he was with his punches, delivering some of the greatest press conference moments and bon mots in UFC history, including introducing “red panty night” into the MMA lexicon and the unforgettable verbal murdering of Jeremy Stephens to his over-the-top antics heading into two-fight series with Nathan Diaz and UFC 205. He has a way with words that has always seemed more organic and entertaining than Chael Sonnen’s forced professional wrestling rip-offs and there was a time when it was absolutely part of his charm and allure.
But those days are over.
He’s no longer “Mystic Mac” who “predicts dees tings” and has been posting highlight reel finishes left, right, and center. He’s not the emerging contender or reigning champion moving up a division to take on a bigger challenge. He’s not the all-time great he quite possibly could have become had he stuck around and defended either of his titles rather than opt for a humungous payday and a punch-up with Floyd Mayweather Jr. and he’s not some kind of conquering hero returning to claim the position he never lost in battle.
Right now, McGregor is just under a week away from turning 33 and he heads into Saturday’s contest off a second-round knockout loss earlier this year. He’s 3-3 over his last six fights, a run that stretches back to the start of 2016 that includes arguably his best performance inside the Octagon (his victory over Eddie Alvarez at UFC 205) and losses in two of his last three appearances; the only victory coming in a 40-second drubbing of an overmatched Donald “Cowboy” Cerrone.
He’s the underdog, the one that was left slumped over in a heap along the fence the last time these two men shared the cage, and despite having a legion of sycophants he constantly retweets that believe he’s some kind of fighting deity and his words are gospel, his latest wave of verbal jabs at Poirier heading into Saturday’s contest sound more like a guy trying real hard to re-frame his stoppage loss and discount Poirier’s performance:
McGregor is in full-blown “I was winning right up until I lost” mode with these comments, looking for ways to prop up his performance in the last fight so that the people aren’t solely focused on the end result of their last encounter.
While I wouldn’t go as far as to suggest it’s a sign of insecurity as Poirier did while responding to McGregor’s initial “first one to shoot” comment (see below), it does feel like a bit of a self-own and a twist on the old Diaz Brothers approach of saying how things would have gone if the other person had fought exclusively on their chosen terms.
How is seeking advice from your coaches a bad thing? Why is wanting direction and insights on the adjustments to make something to be mocked? And why is being a complete mixed martial artist that has a full compliment of skills and uses everything in their arsenal somehow a contemptible trait?
McGregor had it right immediately following the fight when he praised Poirier’s efforts attacking the lead leg with low kicks and spoke about the difficulty of jumping into the Octagon with a legitimate world-class talent when you’ve logged 40-seconds of live cage time in previous 26 months.
Now, he sounds like every other felled fighter who can’t or won’t accept defeat.
It’s not surprising because this has been what he does following every setback — take aim at the man that bested him, give reasons why he lost and examples of where he was winning, and then swear things will be different the next time around — but it rings more and more hollow after each loss, especially because this is a sport where everyone accepts that losses happen and aren't the end of the word.
No one is down on him for getting finished by Poirier, who has been the second-best lightweight in the UFC over the last 4-5 years, losing only to Khabib Nurmagomedov, and yet McGregor is treating it like he got beaten by some scrub who needed to revert to deplorable tactics in order to earn his victory.
Just take the loss, promise to come back better on Saturday, and move on instead of traveling down this toxic road lined with insults and challenges that actually make you look even worse.
Additionally — and this is the part that really gets me — I don’t really see the upside to this approach.
No one except the most ardent Poirier loyalists are counting out McGregor heading into Saturday’s rubber match; he’s too skilled, too talented, too dangerous to be wholly dismissed because things didn’t go his way last time out.
No one is going to be surprised if he earns a victory and wins the series, and so all this boisterous self-praise and denigrating of Poirier’s tactics in January does is create a situation where the fall will be greater if McGregor lands on the wrong side of the results again.
This is why Sonnen’s antics quickly grew stale and remain the least appealing schtick in the business to me to this day: all the bravado and verbal attacks are great until you step into the Octagon and can’t follow through; then it’s just unnecessary chatter that no one should have been giving much credence in the first place.
None of this has done anything to get me more interested in McGregor’s return or give him a greater chance of beating Poirier this weekend — I was already excited to see him compete for the second time in the same year for the first time in nearly half-a-decade, and I have been leaning Poirier since their January clash, but will never count McGregor out of any fight.
But he’s talked himself into a corner here.
He needs to beat Poirier in order save face, to make all this nonsense he’s been going on about for the last couple weeks meaningful, otherwise he comes off looking like a loudmouth that couldn’t back up his words when it really mattered. That won’t do anything to diminish his superstar status because people still seem to prefer fighters that yap above all else, but it will (hopefully) end any and all talk about McGregor returning to title contention.
And it’s been wholly unnecessary.
The rivalry exists. The interest is there. People are excited and going to tune in.
All the usual pay-per-view accoutrements are going to be present this week — Countdown, Embedded, a press conference, ceremonial weigh-ins — all of which will give McGregor all the stage he needs to flap his gums and strut around telling everyone how great he is and how dead Poirier is going to be on Saturday night.
It all feels old at this point.
What would get me more interested though is if McGregor just went silent — no flexing the Twitter fingers, no spinning moments from the last fight in your favor, no name-calling, and no re-tweeting loyalists saying how great you are.
You want to get me pumped to see what happens on Saturday? Go ghost, saying nothing and posting nothing until you absolutely have to, and even then, keep as quiet as possible throughout the Embedded series and Thursday’s press conference.
Just keep telling everyone to tune in Saturday and that they’ll see what you’ve been doing since the last fight then.
Put the brand promotion, petty name-calling, and soul-boosting aside and just go out there and prove all the things you want to claim ahead of time.
Show me, don’t tell me, as my father used to say.
Unfortunately, I’m not sure McGregor can do that, and so here we are, with the Irishman working his usual gimmick, trying to convince everyone things would have been different last time out if they had just gone a different way, making promises no one is going to hold him to once the smoke clears on Saturday night.
Author’s Note: yes, I know he says all this stuff, in part, so that people respond, including in this way, so it’s ultimately effective, even when I say it’s not; I get all that. It’s just that after seven or eight years of this, it’s become tiresome, especially when the efforts haven’t been there to back up the bluster of late.