– Niall Kelly reports from the MGM Grand Garden Arena, Las Vegas
“LISTEN, IN 16 years in this business, the one thing you don’t do is think you know what’s going to happen… because you don’t.”
The canvas had hardly gone cold by the time Dana White started to speak, thousands of stunned fans still slowly making their way out of the MGM Grand Garden Arena, dragging their jaws along the ground behind them.
Predictions that had once seemed so inevitable to so many people had been made to look incredibly foolish, and Nate Diaz was taking particular delight in being the man to burst the bubble.
“I’m not surprised, motherfuckers,” he popped as he stood in the octagon, drinking in the biggest win of his career while the crowd betrayed itself with a murmur that asked: what the hell just happened?
The momentum swing that tilted the UFC 196 main event in Diaz’s favour was so sudden and so significant that everyone watching was left to play catch-up. Conor McGregor appeared to be in total control as Diaz invited punch after punch after punch, the bulk of them coming from McGregor’s left and turning the right side of Diaz’s face into a crimson mess.
But Diaz only needed one shot and when he connected to rock McGregor, he called upon every moment of experience gleaned from a nine-year plus career in the UFC to dial up the pressure and force an upset that few had imagined.
It had been a strange night in the MGM Grand. The lethargy of predictability that had seeped through the week was even more evident as the rest of the card, packed with mediocre fights of little real consequence, played out.
It was only with an absorbing co-main event which saw Miesha Tate stun Holly Holm in a five-round epic for the women’s bantamweight title that the night sparked to life.
With Tate’s shock win, the warning signs were there for those who would heed them; many obviously did and as the end of the night approached, the Vegas sportsbooks reportedly saw a huge surge of money for a lucrative underdog double.
The warning signs from Diaz shouldn’t have needed to be flagged, nor should the legitimate concerns about McGregor’s 25lbs jump to make his welterweight debut have been so easily assuaged by the Dubliner’s total confidence. When it came to the crunch in that second round, the two biggest unknowns — how his power punches would hold up against the bigger man, and how his stamina would be affected if he didn’t find an early finish — both came up in Diaz’s favour.
The Stockton brawler threw more punches, landed more punches, and when a desperate McGregor shot for the takedown that he hoped would see him through to the bell at the end of the second round and sweet respite, he showed the BJJ expertise that many knew could cause problems.
Afterwards, Nick Diaz raced into the media centre to face down those who had written off his baby brother without a second thought. This was a redemptive win for a camp who had to stand by and watch their man be completely underestimated to the point of outright disrespect.
To look at both fighters sitting at that top table, there could only have been one winner. A few scratches and scrapes aside, McGregor’s face was blemish-free; the right side of Diaz’s was purple, the stream of blood now wiped away.
When his turn came to speak, McGregor was coolly analytical and offered no excuses. Where he had only found panic, he praised Diaz for showing composure. He would learn from his mistakes, he said, and come back a better fighter for it.
As his star rocketed with each impressive UFC win, McGregor often trotted out the line that he was equally humble in victory and in defeat. There have been no shortage of opportunities for him to display the former, and on Saturday night, he proved that the opposite also held firm.
Sitting there, heartbroken, he knew that the hallmark of a true champion is not if they get knocked down but rather how they get back up.
More than five years and 15 fights have passed since his last loss in November 2010, a quick submission to Joe Duffy which ate away at him in the years that followed. Back then he was an unknown 22-year-old who had just rediscovered his love for MMA, a far cry from the multi-millionaire global icon he has become.
So this was defeat on a whole other level, for the casual public and his loyal fans as much as for McGregor himself. The aura of invincibility — that same aura that led so many to underestimate Diaz — is now gone.
Now he will have to contend with a new challenge from those who will seek to prematurely write his obituary as a superstar and pick away at the remarkable record he has built. What would have happened if Chad Mendes had a full training camp last July rather than, like Diaz, taking the fight on short notice? Had Jose Aldo showed the composure of a champion instead of leaving himself wide open for a one-punch KO in the very first exchange, what trouble could he have caused?
The answer to the latter might be resolved as early as July. Since losing Ronda Rousey to an even bigger shock at the hands of Holly Holm late last year, the UFC has become increasingly tethered to McGregor’s continuing rise.
Their best laid plans for the landmark UFC 200 card — a two-weight unification bout for McGregor against Rafael dos Anjos or Robbie Lawler, and a rematch between Holm and Rousey — were scuppered twice in the space of an hour by two lesser lights who knew that they were on a shot to nothing.
Defeat will be a bitter pill to swallow for McGregor, but he can take every consolation in the fact that his step up to welterweight was a bold gamble that simply didn’t pay off. Still the undisputed champion of the featherweight division, he has already achieved more than many dreamed was possible for an Irish fighter.
There will be every bit as much interest in his participation at UFC 200 and a mouthwatering rematch with Aldo. He will remain one of the game’s most bankable stars.
This was destined to be the week in which he chased history, but now the unstoppable rise of Conor McGregor faces its toughest test yet.
This is the cauldron in which superstars are made and broken.
