SORRY MMA FANS, but one of the downsides for minority sports achieving mainstream success is to have people who know virtually nothing about them writing stuff about them regardless.
And Conor McGregor’s latest Vegas showpiece against Nate Diaz on Saturday is a cue for us chancers to crawl out of the woodwork.
But from here on in it gets sketchy, like that bit in the Marian Finucane show when a backbench TD is asked about ‘the match’. So…
McGregor think piece alert! McGregor think piece alert!
For most of us, the evolution of our MMA appreciation went like this:
- Stage 1 — This isn’t like the wrestling, right?
- Stage 2 — Why are they wearing boxer shorts?
- Stage 3 — Ah here, that’s a bit much…
- Stage 4 — What do you make of yer man McGregor?
- Stage 5 — Conor, you legend!
It’s been quite a ride, especially the bit over the last year or so that most of us went from number four above to number five. The wins over Chad Mendes and Jose Aldo showed us two things about McGregor, above and beyond the jive talking and Bertie Wooster suits.
The Mendes victory – in which a seemingly doomed McGregor squirmed his way out of his opponent’s death grip and then punched his lights out – demonstrated reserves of courage and character that we weren’t sure existed.
This, after all, was a man who had suggested to Mendes pre-fight that “I could rest my balls on your forehead,” arguably cheapening the discourse slightly.
While that win won our respect, the Aldo knockout, those 13 did-that-really-happen-seconds, provoked genuine awe.
We didn’t know much, but we knew that Aldo wasn’t a chump. We knew that he had been UFC featherweight champion for six years, and was undefeated in 18 fights.
We heard how he had fought his way out of the favelas, about an upbringing that made McGregor look like a character from Brideshead Revisited. We knew he was good.
McGregor, the ultimate social media sports star, took care of him in Vine time. Now we knew he was for real.
That Sunday morning I went into TV3 to do my bit for Sunday AM and even in that rather non-MMA savvy environment it was the only subject anyone wanted to talk about.
My colleague Ivan Yates – not a member of UFC’s target demographic, you might say – was puzzled by it all.
He voiced some widely held views about the sport’s ugliness and the unappealing way McGregor had pummelled a prone Aldo after the initial knockout blow.
“My sons love him though,” he added, with a shrug.
It struck me that McGregor wasn’t just a successful combat sportsman. He was now a rock star. He was what Elvis Presley, Mick Jagger, Johnny Rotten and Kurt Cobain were before him: someone for kids to love and their parents to hate.
McGregor combines the key attributes of any great pop culture anti-hero – the look, the attitude, the other-worldly talent – with that other crucial factor: a perfect moment in time.
For McGregor and the young people of this country who adore him, it’s the post-crash sense of fear and loathing; the bitterness of a generation left high and dry by the greed and incompetence of their elders. They are the youth for whom ‘recovery’ means a McJob or emigration.
They have filled the MGM Grand for all McGregor’s big fights, travelling from Ireland, the US or wherever they have been scattered.
His unstoppable rise has lifted them too; they feel themselves grow bolder with every vicious punch and even more vicious one-liner. They see him defy the the hitherto all-powerful UFC bosses, working to his own rules – writing his own rules.
“Yes, sir, no, sir, clock in, clock out,” McGregor told Sports Illustrated about his short time as an apprentice plumber. “Why were you late? Why are you not in today? That’s not how humans are supposed to live.”
It’s nihilistic, and not always charming, but McGregor’s Ireland, with all its contradictions, was written all over last week’s general election results.
His press conference persona reflects the mongrel mix of political positions we voted for last week. At once he represents the anger and iconoclasm of the hard left, rejecting the ruling elite, while at the same time being as self-interested and nakedly capitalistic as a Wall Street banker.
“Because really I should create my own belt. Because I am, myself, my own belt. It doesn’t matter featherweight, lightweight, welterweight. It’s the McGregor belt….The only weight I give a f**k about is the weight of them cheques, and my cheques are always super heavy.”
But McGregor presented yet another angle to his persona in the accompanying film to the Sports Illustrated interview. It follows him as he trains, grafting and grinding at the SBG gym, far from the lights of Vegas.
And it shows him among his adoring Irish public. “I f**kin’ love this place, I’ll never leave this place ever in my life, this is my home,” he says, while driving through the Dublin evening gloom.
“I go to the US for that sweet cheque and then I high-tail it back here, to be with my own people.”
His quest may just have meaning, something beyond his escalating bank balance.
Be prepared for more McGregor think pieces. In these times when Irish people are thinking a lot about themselves and the future of the country in which they life, this endlessly fascinating character provides plenty to think about, even for us MMA ignoramuses.
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