McGregor v Poirier UFC 257: The five biggest fights that shaped Conor McGregor’s career
Ahead of Conor McGregor’s much-hyped return, Nick Campton rates the five fights that made him one of the most controversial and compelling figures in sport.
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The greatest circus in combat sport is back.
Conor McGregor makes his much-hyped return to the Octagon against Dustin Poirier headlining UFC 257 at ‘Fight Island’ in Abu Dhabi on Sunday.
The Irishman has been sidelined for almost a year and his chances at earning another shot at lightweight champion Khabib Nurmagomedov may well rest on his rematch with Poirier.
Ahead of the biggest UFC fight since McGregor’s last appearance in the cage, we’ve taken a look at the five fights that have made the controversial Irishman one of the most compelling figures in world sport.
HOW TO WATCH THE FIGHT: Watch Poirier v McGregor at UFC 257 live on Main Event on Foxtel and Kayo. Sunday 24 January at 2pm AEDT. ORDER NOW >
vs Dustin Poirier in 2014
This was only McGregor’s fourth UFC fight and it propelled him into the upper echelons of the sport.
The Irishman had two spectacular knockouts to his name and his previous bout was a main event in front of a riotous Dublin crowd, but this was McGregor’s first fight in Las Vegas, his first appearance on a pay-per-view event and the first card that was leveraged around his star power.
His fight with Poirier wasn’t the headlining bout or even the co-main event but in the build up it was clear who the true star of the show was.
Poirier is a better fighter now than he was then — moving to lightweight has helped him enormously and improved what was once a rather brittle chin — but he was still the real deal, ranked as the fifth best featherweight in the world.
He was the greatest test of McGregor’s career to that point and McGregor breezed through him without breaking a sweat.
“I said I would knock him out in the first round, and I knocked him out in the first round. You can call me Mystic Mac, because I predict these things,” McGregor said afterwards.
“I wanted to show the Americans the new fighting Irish, and I brought my whole country with me. When one of us goes to war, we all go to war!”
McGregor would never again fight on an undercard or share top billing with anybody. He’s always been fond of saying he’s the biggest star in the game — that only started being true after he knocked Poirier into the clouds.
vs Jose Aldo in 2015
It’s hard not to feel sorry for Jose Aldo sometimes.
The Brazilian is, by consensus, the greatest featherweight of all time. He went 10 years without losing, tearing through the division like a hurricane in his early days before settling in as the top dog and dispatching all challengers with consummate ease.
In 2014-15 he was legitimately regarded as one of the best fighters in the world pound-for-pound. Nobody challenged him, and nobody disrespected him because nobody would dare.
He hadn’t really seen something like McGregor before. McGregor would say things like “if we lived in a different time I would ride into his favela on horseback and kill anyone who was not fit to work,” and declare he was the true owner of Rio di Janerio.
The UFC embarked on a world tour of press conferences and McGregor stayed at Aldo like a rabid pit bull, sledging him endlessly.
In front of a manic crowd in Dublin he reached across the table and stole Aldo’s belt, hoisting it high as his followers roared and Aldo scrambled to get it back.
When Aldo was cageside for McGregor’s win over Dennis Siver in January of 2015, McGregor charged into the crowd and screamed in Aldo’s face.
Aldo laughed it off, but McGregor’s entire UFC career and everything about his rise to the top was based on getting a fight with Aldo, he was the target at which McGregor aimed and fired.
Almost a year of constant promotion wore him down to the point where he lost sight of everything other than the desire to shut McGregor’s mouth.
When the fight finally happened after being postponed for six months when Aldo suffered a rib injury there were only two conceivable outcomes.
Either Aldo would chop McGregor down, throw his body on the pile with all the others who had fallen over the past 10 years or McGregor would prove to be exactly what he always said he was. The stakes felt incredibly high, like there was far more than a featherweight belt on the line.
Aldo charged in with an uncharacteristic recklessness. McGregor leaned back and fired his left hand. It landed direct on Aldo’s chin, he fell and McGregor finished him off with two shots on the ground.
After 10 years of victory, defeat took 13 seconds. Plenty had tipped McGregor to win, nobody expected it to be like this – even McGregor seemed shocked afterwards. There were no emotional scenes like when he claimed the interim featherweight title earlier that year, no tears or embraces with family.
In truth, the hard work was done well before they entered the cage. This fight is the greatest expression of McGregor’s mental warfare, which has played such a part all through his career.
There are plenty of great fighters out there who are wonderful to watch in the cage or ring – it’s what they do outside it that takes them to the heavens.
Nobody in recent years understands that like McGregor and it never worked better for him than against Aldo.
It proved everything McGregor ever said about himself was true, and by the end of the fight it felt like he could have walked into the Nevada desert, called down the rain and walked on the water.
Destroying a legend shouldn’t take such a short time.
For millions of people, Aldo is not the greatest featherweight of all time – he’s just some Brazilian guy who got knocked stupid so quickly you could have missed it if you turned your heard the wrong way.
McGregor consumes everything in his path, to the point where sometimes it seems the rest of MMA only exists to prop him up.
vs Nate Diaz (second fight) in 2016
Such is McGregor’s star power he brings plenty of punters to the UFC who are not regular fans of combat sports or even sport in general.
Your mother might not know an armbar from a guillotine, but she knows who Conor McGregor is. That’s the difference between him and everyone else, and that’s why he’s able to fight just about whoever he wants.
Nate Diaz never had that kind of gravitas. He’s just not as polished as McGregor, not as well equipped with snappy one-liners or flash suits and he doesn’t wear the spotlight as easily.
Diaz is from the old world of the UFC, when it was still fighting for something close to respectability.
McGregor’s early UFC bouts were in Stockholm, Boston and Dublin before he hit the big leagues and came to Vegas.
Diaz fought in events in places like Omaha, Nebraska and Broomfield, Colorado. He was a star in MMA circles, but outside the sport few knew his name.
That changed forever in just 10 days of March in 2016. McGregor was supposed to take on Rafael dos Anjos for the lightweight title, mere months after his coronation against Aldo. After the 13-second massacre, McGregor never looked more invincible.
Perhaps dos Anjos would have beaten him with his fearsome pressure game, perhaps McGregor would have lanced him with his famous left straight. We’ll never know, because dos Anjos broke his foot and withdrew.
Aldo was offered a rematch, but declined. Diaz, who was sinking shots of tequila in Cabo San Lucas when he got the call, jumped at the chance and became an overnight sensation 10 years in the making.
McGregor tried to do the things he always did. He barked at Diaz about his inferior record and his lack of UFC titles and accused him of playing up his tough guy image. Diaz didn’t take the bait, alternating between telling McGregor to “f--- off” and accusing him of being on steroids.
McGregor kept at it but his barbs never landed – it was like trying to get inside the brain of a brick wall.
It was the first, and to date the only time that McGregor’s mind games were rendered totally ineffective.
The fever pitch around McGregor has reached deafening levels, but Diaz refused to listen.
In their final face-offs before the bout, McGregor was the one who lost control – he took a swing at Diaz and the two had to be separated.
In one of the most remarkable fights in UFC history, Diaz was battered for the first round before rocking McGregor in the second with a sharp one-two, pouring on the pressure and ending the fight with a rear-naked choke that forced McGregor to tap.
The old world had defeated the new, and the McGregor legend would never be the same again.
McGregor had lost twice before in his career, but they were only available as grainy YouTube videos. It had never happened in front of the world.
In hindsight, Diaz has all the tools to beat McGregor. He’s big for a lightweight, and his durability is remarkable.
The Stockton native is famed for his petrol tank and his boxing is based on quantity of shots rather than one or two power punches.
That’s why McGregor’s controversial majority decision win in the rematch that August is perhaps the best performance of his career.
Through five brutal rounds, Diaz and McGregor tore into each other. McGregor showed greater discipline and better management of his offensive output, fighting smarter than he ever had before because he realised blazing through Diaz was not an option.
The decision was close – on another night, Diaz might have got the nod – but McGregor deserved the win.
The fight showed McGregor had transcended the need for titles and belts and championship stakes.
There was no crown on the line when he fought Diaz, but the fans couldn’t get enough.
The rematch was the highest-selling MMA event of all time to that point. The title was important for McGregor’s narrative when he was rising through the ranks because it gave him something to aim for and something for his fans to covet.
But once he won the crown he didn’t need it anymore. He’s bigger than the title. He’s bigger than the sport itself. But that state of being is tenuous – lose too often, or in devastating fashion and it takes time to rebuild the aura, if it ever can be rebuilt.
If McGregor had lost to Diaz a second time everything that happened afterwards would have been lost.
There would have been no second title, no fight with Floyd Mayweather, none of it. The money train went off the tracks, and only got back on by the barest of margins.
vs Floyd Mayweather in 2017
This was a heist. A stick-up. A burglary. A filche. A five-finger discount. A sting. A swindle.
A fever dream of the viral age designed to separate the gullible for their money disguised as a sporting contest. A fight that solved the age old question of who would be a better boxer – a boxer, or some other guy.
McGregor was never going to beat Floyd Mayweather. Some of the best boxers of the last 20 years couldn’t beat Floyd Mayweather.
Boxing and mixed martial arts are two different spots. Josh Addo-Carr can’t run faster than Usain Bolt even though both their spots involve running. This shouldn’t have been difficult to understand.
But this was the great sporting caper of our time. McGregor had cashed up and through a carefully timed bout with Eddie Alvarez he’d become the first UFC fighter to claim titles in two different weight classes at the same time. It was time to cash in, sell an impossible dream and become richer than God.
Money, and the making of it, has always been central to McGregor’s image. He uses it as part of his power, as one of his weapons against his opponents in the lead up to fights.
McGregor knows he can change somebody’s life forever if he picks them. Eventually, the returns from the UFC hit a peak.
There is a level of saturation boxing still possess, a sense of one-off eventship that MMA is still too new to fully touch.
The only thing better than having a bit of money is having a bit more, so it was only natural McGregor set his eyes on the biggest prize of all. Mayweather earned $915 million from 2010 to 2019.
Very few like watching him. They tune in to see him get his head knocked off. It will never, ever happen, but people will keep watching all the same.
McGregor had been jawing at Mayweather for years before they met in the ring, but it’s still a small miracle this fight was made at all or how seriously we were all supposed to take it.
Mayweather claimed he was spending more time in the strip club than the gym. McGregor drip fed his ravenous fans details of his sparring sessions.
There was another world tour of press conference that amped up the garish nature of the whole thing as the two men spat insults at each other. They called it “The Money Fight”.
It felt cheap and stupid and loud, and people could not get enough of it. Everything was designed to do one thing – convince you that the fight was real, that McGregor could make a miracle happen.
Mayweather has become the richest athlete in the history of the planet by being very, very careful.
Even though he could probably have got McGregor out of the ring in less than two minutes if he really wanted to, he played it safe and barely threw a punch until 25 minutes of the fight had passed – in other words, the length of a championship MMA fight.
McGregor poked and prodded but never looked dangerous. It didn’t matter. The money had already been spent.
Eventually, Mayweather decided McGregor was tired enough to not possibly pose a threat and he smacked him around until the ref waved it off. It was not a good fight, but it was a good grift.
The entire world watched this happen. It was one of the sporting events of the year, if not the decade.
McGregor made close to $130 million, Mayweather walked away with something north of $280 million.
Everyone in and around the fighters got a piece. Mayweather and McGregor shared a whiskey after the fight, all the heat and hatred forgotten. They were too rich to be enemies anymore.
McGregor has come back to the UFC since but still teases a return to boxing, either for a Mayweather rematch or with Manny Pacquiao.
It does ever happen it won’t be as big the second time around. You can shear a sheep many times but skin him only once.
Mayweather retired after the fight but had an exhibition against Japanese kickboxer Tenshin Nasukawa in 2018.
He’ll have another exhibition against YouTube star Logan Paul in February. It will be another heist, and it will work because Mayweather learned something from fighting McGregor – more people will watch famous people fight than will watch great fighters.
vs Nurmagomedov in 2018
A great deal of Conor McGregor’s story can be told through the way his opponents react to the entire circus. Some, like Jose Aldo, are undone by their own machismo.
Others, like Eddie Alvarez and Donald Cerrone, are beaten before they step inside the cage. When it came to Khabib Nurmagomedov, McGregor met his match in more ways than one.
The Irish is fond of telling his opponents “you’ll do f--king nothing” in response to his talk. Nurmagomedov is someone who will do something.
Along with Diaz, Nurmagomedov is McGregor’s greatest rival. Both are larger than life and uncommonly charismatic – where McGregor is a whirl of action and cash, Nurmagomedov is like something from a Dagestani myth.
He grew up wrestling bears in the mountains in a forgotten corner of Russia, and he’s come down from the hills to conquer the world.
The lead up to their fight in 2018 carried a lengthy backstory. McGregor attacked a bus containing Nurmagomedov and his team in Brooklyn after Nurmagomedov slapped one of the Irishman’s training partners.
McGregor was arrested and charged, Nurmagomedov won the vacant title and the way forward was clear. For all Dana White’s scolding, the attack gave the fight genuine bad blood and ramped up interest even further.
McGregor hadn’t fought in the UFC for two years when he entered the cage in Las Vegas and was as well known for scandals outside the Octagon as he was for his deeds within it, but he still had some of the magic.
The hype machine was running on fumes so McGregor did all the old things – he rattled off insults, promised to blast Nurmagomedov’s head out of the cage and had Drake as part of his entourage for the weigh-ins. The Irish hordes came along again, and it all felt like it used to be.
Nurmagomedov never rose to the bait, even when McGregor aimed a kick at him during their final face off.
He dominated throughout, imposing his incredible grappling game and forcing McGregor to the canvas time and again.
He even knocked McGregor off his feet with a wicked overhand right, landing the hardest blow of the fight in what was supposed to be McGregor’s domain.
After finishing one round on top of McGregor, raining down clubbing punches, Nurmagomedov asked McGregor where his talk was now. McGregor replied it was just business, and for him it always is.
For Nurmagomedov, who comes from a culture where things like honour and respect are not just words but grounds for a challenge and where wild, uncontrolled violence is not foreign to him, it can never be that way.
McGregor knows what he’s doing when he opens his mouth, but with Nurmagomedov he was doing it to a man he didn’t fully understand.
So it shouldn’t have been all that surprising that after McGregor tapped to a neck crank, Nurmagomedov held on the choke a little longer than he should have.
Or when he went after McGregor’s cornerman Dillon Danis, who apes McGregor’s style but has none of his charms. Nurmagomedov jumped the cage and the two teams started brawling as the bad blood of almost a year of feuding spilt over.
The fans howled with fury and fought in the streets afterwards. Nurmagomedov and McGregor were both given slaps on the wrist and one of the Russian’s cornermen spent the night behind bars.
McGregor fought as well as he could have against Nurmagomedov, who is widely considered the greatest lightweight of all time.
He didn’t throw in the towel as the odds mounted and managed to win the third round despite getting smashed all around the place in the second.
But there were no excuses like there could have been for the losses to Diaz and Mayweather – there was no late change or poor strategy and he was not in another man’s domain.
This was just a better fighter winning on the day, It is hard to be a living legend, to be a force of nature that moves earth and heaven and gets paid millions to do it, when you’ve been thrown in the dirt and slapped around for three and a half rounds.
McGregor is yet to reclaim that magic. He’s still the biggest star in the sport and famous all around the world, but the Nurmagomedov fight is the first time his infamy outside the cage surpassed his achievements within it.
People forget things that aren’t right in front of them, and with the exception of his win over Cerrone last year (where the overmatched American appeared to a knockout loss was inevitable about three days out from the fight) it’s now been four full years since we saw the best of McGregor.
In some ways, he’s back where he started, with plenty to prove and a host of compelling match-ups in front of him. After everything he’s done, his greatest challenge may well be reinvention.
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Originally published as McGregor v Poirier UFC 257: The five biggest fights that shaped Conor McGregor’s career
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