– Niall Kelly reports from Las Vegas
THE PROVOCATION WAS minimal, if Nate Diaz’s outstretched arm could even reasonably be classed as provocative, but it was enough. Conor McGregor saw his opportunity and, left fist clenched, swung.
Call it a kerfuffle, a skirmish, fireworks, or whatever you want. The fact that people are reaching for the appropriate word is what matters because, as McGregor knows only too well, there is no such thing as bad publicity.
If a bit of contrived pushing and shoving can drive up the pay-per-view numbers for UFC 196 in the final 48 hours, then that’s what needs to be done.
Business is business.
Saturday’s event at the MGM Grand Garden Arena is not a sell-out yet. It doesn’t help that the Irish fans are being asked to travel out to Las Vegas for a third time in less than nine months, with the summer’s tantalising UFC 200 card very much on the horizon as well.
Their numbers were still thin on the ground on Thursday with nothing approximating the takeover that swarmed Sin City for the Aldo fight in December.
At the same time, there is nothing to suggest that the card is in danger of underperforming. On the contrary, a Forbes report last week indicated that 196 could break the record of one million PPV buys for a non-title event.
But there is a growing sense of inevitability that is beginning to seep into conversations. Take former middleweight champion Chris Weidman, for example, who said on Thursday: “I love Nate Diaz… but if my money was out there, I’m putting it on Conor.”
In the sportsbooks of the Vegas casinos, McGregor can be backed at odds of -430 — a 1/4 shot in real money. Diaz’s camp might rightly feel that the prices and the punditry are disrespectful to a fighter who has nearly nine years of UFC service under his belt and has pitted himself against some of the best.
But the most interesting conversations this week have rarely concerned the Stockton man. They assume a McGregor win on Saturday night and are already looking beyond that, to the prospect of him dropping back down to defend his featherweight crown or a possible welterweight tilt against champion Robbie Lawler.
Even Floyd Mayweather seemed to be getting as much traction as Diaz before McGregor lashed out and reminded everyone why they have come here in the first place.
The back-and-forth verbal jousting between the camps continued at the press conference. Diaz took his shot, describing McGregor’s work with movement coach Ido Portal as “playing touch butt with that little dork in the park.”
McGregor fired back. ”You’re like a gazelle bunched up together and hoping you get spared,” he taunted.
Your little gazelle friends are going to look through the cage at you getting eaten alive and they’re going to say, ‘We’re never going to cross this river again.’
When he wasn’t taunting Diaz — “Dance for me,” he ordered at one point — McGregor was busy asserting his position as the most influential fighter in the sport right now.
“You’re damn right I’ll hit that billion mark,” he insisted on the back of a record $600 million revenue year for the UFC in 2015, a year in which he headlined three shows including two here at the MGM Grand Garden.
I know the people in the MGM are singing, singing all the way to the bank. Maybe take out that lion statue and put in an Irish lion, put me standing up there.
“I did say in an interview that Vegas is wearing on me but when I come here, I actually do really enjoy Vegas. I’ve buried three bodies clean out here. Saturday night will be a fourth body.”
Earlier this week he had spoken about the creation of a new ‘McGregor belt’ for anyone who can beat him, a suggestion which sounds frankly absurd within the context of the existing UFC structures but not so much if he was to break away and set up his own rival organisation, a possibility well within the scope of his never-ending ambition.
“I’m not trying to be bigger than nobody,” he reassured his paymasters. “I’m just trying to be me.
“I am with this company, that’s it, the UFC. It’s a company and a promotion that I am passionate about.
“This company got me into the game. To be rising up and to be neck and neck is where I want to be.
Maybe in time I will climb and take that lion’s share of the pie but we will always be still together. I will be with (UFC parent company) Zuffa until the day I walk away from the game, 100%.
“I’d like to fight myself,” he later mused when asked about his dream opponent, unwilling to let any realistic rival bask too cheaply in his glow.
Imagine the numbers if there was two of me.
It’s no great surprise to hear McGregor flaunt his business credentials. This time, he backed up his words with the one move guaranteed to turn the spotlight back on to Saturday’s fight.
The42 is on Snapchat! Tap the button below on your phone to add!
