When Conor McGregor was submitted by the much bigger Nate Diaz at UFC 196 for his first loss in the UFC, McGregor wrote on social media “when the history books are written I showed up”.
He promised us that, and he consistently delivered it.
McGregor kept on making the featherweight limit even when he had to knock on death’s door in order to do it, right up until he won the title.
He fought injured time and again.
Against Chad Mendes he made the best walk in UFC history with a torn ACL and won anyway.
In the third Poirier fight, McGregor made the walk with stress fractures up and down his leg and kicked Poirier with reckless abandon.
That ended somewhat less well.
He fought late notice, stylistic opposites again and again as well.
When Jose Aldo was forced out of the fight with McGregor in the first instance, McGregor took the Mendes fight for interim UFC gold at UFC 189 on 11 days notice.
Mendes was a pure wrestler, Aldo was more comfortable on the feet and it didn’t matter to McGregor.
Or what about that Diaz fight at UFC 196?
McGregor was initially scheduled to fight Rafael Dos Anjos at UFC 196 at the lightweight limit of 155 pounds.
However, once again, Dos Anjos was injured so McGregor took a non-title fight with Nate Diaz on 11 days-notice at 170 pounds.
When the history books are written, they will show that McGregor always showed up.
Until now.
When Conor McGregor pulled out of his scheduled bout with Michael Chandler at UFC 303 he broke the last promise to fans that he had not yet broken.
The promise that Conor McGregor, despite everything else that goes on in his life, keeps his appointments.
All for an injury that is “not severe”.
Ariel Helwani says the Conor McGregor injury is not severe. He was asked not to disclose what the injury is.#HelwaniShow pic.twitter.com/trNCVvkapk
— Jed I. Goodman © (@jedigoodman) June 14, 2024
I don’t begrudge him for pulling out, if he’s injured, he’s injured.
But this betrayal is the latest in a long line of broken promises from the guy who took MMA mainstream on his own and seems now to be trying to push it back into the sewer.
You can’t talk about the fall of McGregor without talking about the rise.
He was like a movie star who hurt people on his way up.
All athletes have confidence because they know they can do something that the vast, vast majority of the global population can’t do.
Actors get intimidated by athletes.
Athletes are awed by fighters.
Conor McGregor was feted by everyone.
His confidence was electric because he always delivered on it. He would tell us, eloquently and funnily, how he was going to beat a guy up then he did it and told us who was next.
The best example was when he promised Jose Aldo, from the bottom of his heart, that Aldo’s time would come after he beat Mendes.
It came.
He was like John Wick with more jokes, except McGregor didn’t even need a pencil because he had a left hand.
But it wasn’t just the talk. McGregor was ravenous for success. He needed it like he needed oxygen. It showed in the way he didn’t just stare at opposition fighters, he stared through them. He blackened his eyes.
He looked at opponents like Michael Corleone looked at Kay when she told him she had an abortion.
He seethed at the notion that he and his opponent were on equal footing in the world.
He had this rare view of the world where every opponent was a footnote in The Story of Conor McGregor.
The overarching promise of McGregor, which he kept, was that he would be the hardest working, most committed, most charismatic man on the roster.
But things changed slowly.
After he fought Floyd Mayweather, McGregor became less active in the octagon and more active on social media.
He called out fighters he never had any intention of fighting, largely because he didn’t appear to intend on fighting at all.
He became like Robert De Niro in Heat.
Talking a big game about his principles but when push came to shove, Neil had to kill Waingro and McGregor had to have a whiskey. Then another one.
While McGregor always appeared to be in good physical condition, it was clear that his mind had left fighting.
He was more prominently seen socially, attending premieres and getting into fights with Machine Gun Kelly.
Instead of fighting fighters he was fighting mascots and old men in pubs.
Instead of talking at press conferences, he was incoherently babbling on twitter.
In the lead up to his fight against Donald Cerrone, McGregor himself admitted to not living a “full martial arts lifestyle.”
That admission came against the backdrop of rumors that McGregor is often partying, not training like he used to, was surrounded by yes men and yes men’s yes men like Dillon Danis, and idolised all of the worst parts of Scarface.
Where once he was a hyper-professional, now it was part time.
And that part has got less and less over the years.
Five weeks out from the Michael Chandler fight that was cancelled because of an injury, McGregor was spotted partying at his pub in Dublin.
🇮🇪CONOR MCGREGOR SPOTTED PARTYING SIX WEEKS BEFORE UFC COMEBACK
McGregor was spotted partying at his Dublin bar, The Black Forge Inn, just six weeks before his UFC 303 fight against Michael Chandler.
McGregor had previously hinted at an alcohol ban ahead of his bout.
Videos… pic.twitter.com/cBNZPfVgDJ
— Mario Nawfal (@MarioNawfal) May 26, 2024
It used to be that he would switch off the party gear when a fight came around.
McGregor was a genius at shutting the world out and focussing on where his bread was buttered: fighting.
When that footage emerged, it became clear for anyone who could see through McGregor’s bluster that McGregor was not even close to the man that rose in the mid-2010s.
He was a part time fighter with a vaguely familiar, though surgically altered face.
His career has been a lot like the Wolf of Wall Street.
The rise was meteoric and compelling, based largely on his own charisma with the downfall has been just as fast, and just as fuelled by mind-altering substances.
Even if the charisma is still there in bursts, we know too much about what is in the heart of the protagonist, too much about his various crimes against women and humanity, and it makes them ever harder to root for.
In the long run I worry about Conor McGregor.
Someone like him seems unlikely to ever let it go, even despite old assurances that he would leave the game when he had enough money to live on.
A promise that he made after he saw a sparring partner killed while he was cage side.
Another promise he broke.
With the amount of head trauma that he has suffered along with the amount of substances he has ingested, it is difficult to listen to him stutter as he talks and see a positive ending for the force behind the most electric run in UFC history.
But for now I’m just frustrated to see that one of the most electric athletes in my lifetime has been reduced to just another hypocrite and liar in a sporting world that is full of them.
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