Me looking like a fat McGregor, last NYE
A lot of friends over the last two or so years have asked me
the same question “What do you think of Conor McGregor?”. Knowing that I’ve been following the UFC for
over seven years and having trained in both Muay Thai and Brazilian Jiu Jitsu
extensively (I’m not saying I’m any good at either, or that I could scrap my
way out of a paper bag, but I’ve learned a few things over the years) enquirers have taken an
interest in my opinion with presumption I’ve got some vast insider knowledge
which would provide some ground-breaking insight on MMA’s mouthiest
fighter. I’ve always found my opinions
quite conflicted on the Dubliner’s success, so decided to write a blog post
examining this point of view and somehow managed to ramble on for over two thousand,
five hundred words. So, if you have
literally nothing else to do with your time, please feel free to read what
follows. If not, I can only congratulate
you on your intelligent selection of priorities and time management, may you
have a pleasant evening, afternoon or morning.
Let’s go with the most obvious bias I may have towards
McGregor – we share first names. One of
the first things people now say to me when I introduce myself is “Conor? Like McGregor?” Which is somehow a welcome change to “Like
Sarah Connor?” It also means that they’re
more likely to be able to spell my name correctly. As with many Gaelic names there are sometimes
a handful of ways to spell it, Conor, Connor, Coner, Connaire, Conchubar (there’s
a lot of silent letters in the Irish language), Conar. One of my personal hates are when people who
are writing an e-mail or Facebook response to me can’t even spell my name
right, despite it being on screen. Mac’s
success has somehow prompted a drop in the occurrence of this. So, I’ve got one thing to thank him for. We’ll get back to the other obvious of being
Irish a little bit later, but I’m going to delve a little into a lesser known bias
I may have: gym affiliation.
McGregor’s team, coached by John Kavanagh is based at the
Straight Blast Gym headquarters in Dublin.
It has been so successful that Kavanagh has been able to expand, opening
up several gyms with great coaches all over Ireland. One of which (previously Maeda BJJ) is based
in my hometown of Belfast and I’ve had the benefit of training in from time to
time over the last year or so. Not only
has the gym been a boon to me developing my Jiu Jitsu abilities, but it’s
allowed me to try a range of classes – striking, yoga, even a movement class taught
by a ballet teacher. There’s a great
vibe in the city centre gym, with an environment conducive to building a supportive
team and the skills of the team members, so with that in mind does that me even
more biased in his favour? The answer to
that is – no. In my six months of living
in Dublin, I didn’t get to train at the SBG HQ once. My hectic work schedule didn’t give me much opportunity
to the massive dojo and even if I’d been able to make the trip, the gym has
earned enough prestige to charge a premium rate, which may have been outside of
my attempted “save money whilst getting wrecked at the weekends” budget.
Instead, I found myself gravitating towards closer, smaller
gyms which offered potentially more focused instruction. I can’t comment on the quality of the coaching
in the SBG HQ as I’ve never been there, but I’ve mostly good things. Kavanagh is heralded for his expertise as one
of Ireland’s first black belts in BJJ and his dedication to the gym are
unquestionable. The few bad things I’ve
heard largely connected to the complex being a victim of its own success – such
a large number of students eagerly coming in, can be a little bit chaotic, but
I’d rather not comment to much on the circumstances of the gym as I’ve only
ever been at the gym for a competition. Much
more suited to me price wise and geographically were Andre Ramos’s gym and Hugo
Borim’s Arena MMA were two gyms that I got to practice BJJ with instructors who
not only made me feel like part of their Jiu Jitsu family, but showed an
interest in making me improve my game.
Andre, having won the SBG Fighter of the Year Award in 2007 had good
things to say about McGregor, having trained with him throughout his time at
the gym, commenting on how McGregor was largely humble during their time
training and would take an interest in his teammate’s progress as much as his
own. During those months, coach Hugo Borim, though he seemed
to have nothing personal against McGregor, was dismantling . TThat
is to say that the European IBJ JF
Rome Open and Euro No Gi Championship winning brown belt had been building a reputation
for calling out McGregor’s team mates such as Philip Mulpeter and Cathal Pendred in professional cage grappling matches. MMA fighter Joe
McColgan, whom I occasionally trained Muay Thai with and have only the utmost
respect for has been doing the same with MMA matches, performing at a high
level in Clan Wars against SBG fighters such as Peter Queally, going so far as to call out
Artem Lobov. So, when all said and done,
my loyalty to McGregor on a more local level is kind of split. He’s a team mate of my team mates, whilst a
rival of past coaches or past team mates of mine. It’s a bit like having a third cousin twice
removed. E.g. You have no earthly idea
who they actually are. One could argue
I’ve only got myself to blame, flitting from one gym to another, partially out
of interest and out of convenience. If we’re
honest though, there’s enough ugly politics in the big bad real world that I’d
much rather keep something as fantastic as Jiu Jitsu free from it. I also believe that to really see personal development,
you need to train with as many different people as possible, so you can learn
different things from each of them, incorporate different techniques both
offensive and defensive.
As for the Irish
connection, this is something which has made things a little more difficult to
make a firm decision on whether I like what the guy does. I could go on about my own personal opinion
of Nationalism for another ridiculously long blog post but, as stand-up
comedians like Doug Stanhope have argued is simply taking pride in the
achievements of other people, purely because they were born under the same
politically defined borders as you. It’s
a little bit difficult to argue against this, but yet there’s something so
intrinsically fun to considering yourself Irish and wanting to relish in the
excitement McG has when he invokes Irish pride.
We’re considered some of the friendliest people on the planet and we’re somehow
able to turn the negative stereotypes of being alcoholics into being sociable
charmers with sexy accents. McGregor has
been able to tap into a different part of the Irish identity to promote his – that of the Celtic warrior. He’s harnessed references to the Viking TV
show (filmed in Wicklow), haunting melodies from Sinead O’Connor (though you
could say it was incredibly cheesy depending on your point of view, this was the
first time there was a live performance of an entrance song for a UFC fight was
when Conor took on Chad Mendes weathered a storm of ground and pound and came
back with a stunning TKO victory) and made statements which have made everyone
from the classic “My great grand pappy was from Tipperary” Yank to people with
not one Irish relative feel Irish. When Notorious
made short work of Dustin Porier and declared “We’re not here to take part, we’re
here to take over” he had the entire crowd on their feet. Go on any given post on the UFC Facebook page
and you’ll see random Eastern European McGregor fans harp on about how he could
beat literally anybody, sometimes following it up with Irish flag emoticons. The ghost of Bruce Lee, the dragons from Game
of Thrones, young Mike Tyson. For this
reason, it’s hard to deny that McGregor is anything short of a cultural phenomenon.
It’s hard to name a sport star that has generated as much
hype as the result predicting Dub. Messi
might make more money, but his fans don’t suddenly want to become Argentinian
or Catalan because of his beautiful ball handling skills. Mohammed Ali is probably the most charismatic
talker in sporting history, but it didn’t cause a whole heap of Polish people
to convert to Islam and support the black civil rights movement. Now, it’s easy to argue that McGregor’s trash
talk lacks the class that Ali’s talk had.
Ali didn’t have to engage the sailor mouth that McGregor has, but this
is a different era, a post-Limp Bizkit, post Stone Cold Steve Austin vs The
Rock at Wrestlemania era. Use of the
word ‘motherfucker’ is so prevalent in today’s society that it has lost almost
all of the shock value it would have had back in the ‘60s. It’s also notable that McGregor has used
homophobic or even sexist language to get into the heads of his opponents and
upsell fights that in a society where political correctness is a point of
contention. Whilst I generally believe
that political correctness is necessary, especially when you’re going to stoke
that feeling of Irish pride, you need to remember that it wasn’t too long ago
the signs were saying “No backs, no dogs, no Irish”, it’s easy to see how going
against the grain to drum up controversy is still a valid tool in trash
talking, increasing ticket revenue and running mind games despite its arguably
abhorrent and hypocritical nature. Let’s
try to remember who the competitors in the sport are – fighters aren’t
typically from affluent, well-educated backgrounds (well, aside from the
American collegiate wrestlers), McGregor has said himself gave up plumbing and
had to survive on the Irish welfare system until he was successful as a
fighter. It seems a little bit bourgeois
for someone like myself coming from a middle class background to take massive
issue with language used by someone from McGregor’s working class one, even
when there are a few question marks over the actual level of how working class
his background actually is.
The trash talking has led to two other effects though. It has inspired whole swathes of other
fighters to start running game with their mouth to generate interest in their
bouts. With a few standout exceptions prior
to McGregor’s big mouth emergence – Chael Sonnen, the Diaz brothers, Michael Bisping,
Tito Ortiz, UFC fighters have had a tendency to play the “humble warrior”
card. Whilst it may be a fairer
representation of their personalities, or of the martial arts philosophies, it’s
unlikely to appeal to a wider, layman audience.
Now everyone from McGregor’s team mate Artem Lobov to relatively unknown Jeremy Stephens (now better known purely because his words in a press conference prompted McGregor to sneeringly ask "Who the fuck is that guy?") are trying to
get their own slice of the pie. Whilst
not exactly the Irish fighter’s fault, the volume of insults thrown around
press conferences and fighter’s social media accounts have increased
exponentially. Some of it is enjoyable, but considering
McGregor at times sounds like a budget version of one of the Rubberbandits, the
vast majority of it is cringe worthy and has transparent as a large chested
woman’s t-shirt in a wet t-shirt competition.
Or in another words, as awkwardly spoken as that last sentence was
written. The second effect, perhaps a
by-product of this professional wrestling style atmosphere, or by the expanding
fan base has meant that fight purses have gone up. The UFC may be a business, but by most
accounts, it’s been underpaying the vast majority of fighters for years. Considering these fighters are putting not
just their long term health but their lives (there are only a handful of MMA
related deaths and none in the UFC, but with any sport involving head trauma,
there’s a risk) on the line, those not on the upper echelons of the sport are
typically grinding and barely earning enough to pay living expenses and trainer
costs until they make it to the top five or top ten of their division. There’s often more money for fighters in
lesser known organizations like Bellator and One FC than the UFC itself. With UFC’s recent sponsorship deal with
Reebok, the organization has also made it impossible for fighter’s to get paid
good money for wearing other brands of MMA gear such as Affliction, Sprawl, Bad
Boy or even Tap Out for instance.
That being said, I do take great issue with the aforementioned
bandwagon fans. More so because I’m a long
term UFC fan than for any other reason. I
may not have been around there at the beginning when Royce Gracie was choking
out strikers two hundred pounds heavier than him, but I was around when a Mohawk
sporting Chuck Liddell was savaging people with deadly combos and refusing to
let the fight go to the ground. I’m
happy that these days the likelihood of me being able to have a pub
conversation about the sport has grown massively, but I’m not so happy that
Johnny come-latelies will decide to turn every conversation about the sport
into a conversation about Notorious.
McGregor might be the most successful fighter in terms of pay-per-view
sales and purse size in UFC’s history, but when I hear ridiculous statements
like “He’s got the best kicks in UFC” and challenge those statements with “What
about Anderson Silva or Mirko Cro Cop?” and have nothing but blank expressions
fired back at me, or get told that McGregor was once a successful bare knuckle
boxer who killed a man with his bare hands I have to suppress the rage from
building up. I’m just plain baffled by
the level of ignorance I’m subjected to.
It may not be the most important issue in the world, but it’s my own
personal gripe. I’m sure if someone said
that Christiano Ronaldo was the best defender in the history of football, it
might enrage a few football fans as well.
So, there you have it.
A ridiculously long blog post no-one is likely to read about the double
edged sword that is Conor McGregor. Other
than a series of yeses to questions the few people who’ve actually read it
might ask. Yes, I think he’s a very
good technical fighter - though he could work on his jitz game more and learn to tie that belt! Yes I think he barely won the last
fight against Diaz, but he just about edged it and lastly, yes he probably was
about to get sparked out by Nate in the first fight only going for the take
down because he was aware it’s a lot more ungracious to be knocked out than it
is to be tapped out. And yes, I am
looking forward to the fight against Alvarez.
It could go either way.
Meth-Gregor. AMIRITE? (Please don't hunt me down and punch me in the mouth.)
