APEX

Conor McGregor seems like a bit of a dick, generally speaking.  From threatening to rest his balls on Chad Mendes’ face, to suggesting that in a different time and place, he would have ridden into Jose Aldo’s favela and killed everyone not fit to work, at times McGregor comes across as a bully.  Yet, I can’t help but cheer for him, as his unquenchable thirst to take on the whole world is inspirational, original, and at times hilarious. 

Conor cannot yet be called the best fighter in mixed martial arts (“MMA”) history, but he is unquestionably the most important fighter in the sport’s history post-Royce Gracie (Gracie won the first two UFC tournaments against much larger men, propelling jiu-jitsu and MMA into the national consciousness).  While Royce is responsible for creating initial interest in the UFC, Conor is responsible for taking the sport and the promotion to new heights.  To arrive at the peak upon which he currently sits, the Irish knockout artist had to overcome a number of foes, both inside and outside the cage.

Conor vs. Boxing

Before Conor McGregor’s ascension, boxing was, in a very unscientific way, still the premiere combat sport in America.  Sure, if you combined all of the UFC pay per views over the course of a year and compared that number with the number of boxing pay per views over the same time period, the UFC number would be higher.  However, boxing still had the biggest stars, and the biggest events.  Other than the most hardcore MMA fans, nobody remembers where they were when Mirko Cro Cop knocked out Wanderlei Silva with a head kick or how they felt when Fedor decimated Nogueira for the first time.  By contrast, boxing’s biggest stars captured the public’s attention when they fought; the events were spectacles that appealed to the masses, not merely the hardcore fans.  Fighters like Tyson, Mayweather, Pacquiao, and De La Hoya were able to sell out massive arenas and draw enormous pay per view buy rates on the strength of their names alone.  Part of this disparity in star wattage was because boxing had history and HBO on its side, while the UFC countered with Spike TV and no history.  Another part of the incongruence in star power, however, was intentional: the UFC business model was created (in part) to limit the appeal and leverage of individual fighters, and instead to promote the brand, first and foremost. 

The previous generation of MMA megastars (Anderson Silva, Georges St. Pierre, Chuck Liddell, Randy Couture, BJ Penn, Matt Hughes, Tito Ortiz) all lacked a necessary ingredient to break through the glass ceiling into mainstream acceptance that a handful of boxers had managed to shatter.  Liddell could barely string 3 sentences together without falling asleep, and looked more like a bar fighter than a world class pugilist; Couture’s fighting style was too boring; Anderson couldn’t speak English; BJ Penn didn’t seem particularly interested; Matt Hughes was too country; GSP was too nice; and Tito Ortiz, the first UFC fighter to truly leverage his personal brand, simply wasn’t good enough at fighting. 

Conor McGregor suffers from none of those shortcomings.  His combination of looks, quick-witted and brash trash talk, brutal honesty, athleticism, punching power, and violent, explosive, and seemingly relaxed fighting style has made him a unique and irresistible force of nature.  Even the boxing world has been forced to stop and take note; for the first time, the most famous fighter in the world fights in a cage, instead of a ring. 

Conor’s boxing contemporaries have taken note of his meteoric rise.  In professional wrestling, there is a term called breaking the fourth wall, which occurs when a performer acknowledges things outside of the pro wrestling world.  As Conor’s fame has grown, many boxers have broken the fourth wall of boxing and expressed a range of opinions about him.  Some have expressed either a desire to fight him (as Canelo, Floyd Mayweather, and Amir Khan have done), or root against him (as Canelo and Andre Ward did prior to Conor’s fights with Nate Diaz), or cheer for him (as Sergey Kovalev and Manny Pacquiao did after McGregor’s destruction of Eddie Alvarez).  Of particular note has been the interplay between Conor and Mayweather.  Both men recognize profit-making potential; they are classic foils.  In Conor, Floyd finally has a megastar rival who isn’t scared to say outrageous things.  Conor in fact insinuated he would murder Floyd and bury him in the desert at one point, and on another occasion threatened to show up at Mayweather’s house. 

The simultaneous rise of MMA and decline of boxing has parallels that extend beyond the world of sports.  In the wonderful book Sapiens, author Yuval Noah Harari writes that it is ridiculous to conclude that large predators were eliminated by climate change rather than human advancement in using fire to kill; it is similarly absurd to think that boxing’s death is not due mostly to MMA’s rise.  Conor McGregor is the fireball sent to burn boxing’s habitat; instead of being able to hide in the forest, boxing has been smoked out and annihilated.  In Conor McGregor, MMA finally has a transcendent star able to capture the public’s imagination, which has proven to be the tipping point between MMA’s advance and boxing’s retreat. 

For years, boxing writers and commentators looked down on MMA and acted as though the sport was a fad, while boxing promoters like Bob Arum said it was for skinheads and homosexuals, and only appealed to white males. These theories have been debunked; there has been a clear societal shift in favor of MMA and away from boxing now that the McGregor Era is fully upon us.  Boxing writers have had to come to grips, grudgingly, with their new place as the second-most important (out of only 2) combat sports in the American psyche.  Mayweather vs. Pacquiao, the highest-selling pay per view fight of all time, took place merely a year and a half ago and yet already feels like ancient history.  Floyd’s follow-up pay per view fight against Andre Berto drew only 400k ppv buys, and Pacquiao’s recent fight against Jesse Vargas brought in only 300k buys.  Conor has more than doubled the combined pay per view buys of the two most popular boxers of the last quarter century in each of his last three fights. 

In the earlier days of MMA, boxers would demean the sport and its fighters.  Now, Canelo Alvarez, boxing’s biggest active star, can’t be interviewed without being asked about Conor McGregor; nor can Andre Ward.   I personally thought one of the most important moments in MMA history came not inside of the Octagon, but when Canelo was photographed wearing a Nate Diaz “I’m not surprised” t-shirt to commemorate Nate’s victory over Conor at UFC 196.  Meanwhile, Andre Ward admitted to buying the Conor-Diaz I pay per view instead of watching a boxing show the same night. 

Conor vs. Everyone in the UFC

Unlike previous MMA stars who didn’t want to step on the toes of their colleagues, Conor seeks out drama at every turn.  Many fighters are afraid that talking too much shit will come back to bite them; Conor uses the fear of failure to drive himself to new heights.  By talking so much shit, he has to perform or face humiliation.  Like a diamond, Conor McGregor has been formed under pressure, and most of his opponents have cracked under the stress.  Jose Aldo seemed to shrink away from Conor; Eddie Alvarez looked as if he had forgotten how to fight entirely, and Dustin Poirier seemed more like a club fighter than a world-class athlete when months of trash talking culminated in his quick humiliation at Conor’s hands.

Before his fight with featherweight (145 Lb.) champion Jose Aldo, who hadn’t lost a fight in 10 years prior to their 13-second match, Conor told Aldo in Portuguese that he (Aldo) was going to die, grabbed Aldo’s belt at a press conference, threatened to ride into Aldo’s favela on horseback, and said that Aldo was already mentally broken.  This, against a man who not only was seemingly unbeatable, but who was known for the incredible amounts of violence he could dish out.  Aldo, a ball of explosive muscle with the most devastating low kicks and knees in the history of the sport, had never before dealt with someone who blatantly disrespected him.  Most fighters tried to be kind to Aldo to minimize the long-lasting damage he would inevitably dish out to them.  Not Conor. 

Before his scheduled match with then-lightweight (155 Lb.) pound champion Rafael dos Anjos, Conor called Dos Anjos a fake Brazilian sellout who moved to America and abandoned his fatherland.  Conor said he would “behead Rafael Dos Anjos, I will drag his head through the streets of Rio de Janeiro through a parade of people.  I imagine it will also become a national holiday. Just a sign of recognizing who’s true and who’s not.”  Dos Anjos pulled out 2 weeks before the bout, as Aldo did as well before their first scheduled clash.  Conor called Dustin Poirier a fighter with “a weak chin and a weak heart” before decimating him in less than 2 minutes.  Conor said that Frankie Edgar just “wasn’t good enough” to beat Jose Aldo, said that Donald Cerrone was “too slow and too stiff”, said he would change Rafael dos Anjos’ “bum life”, and of course, annihilated poor Jeremy Stephens.

Conor has learned that the best way to stay relevant is to constantly be in the news.  At the weigh-ins at UFC 205, Conor had two separate altercations with welterweight (170 Lb.) champion Tyron Woodley, and a separate altercation with lightweight number 1 contender Khabib Nubragramedov.  Conor has even thrown shade on professional wrestlers to keep his name in the headlines; he said that Brock Lesnar was “juiced up to the fucking eyeballs”, and added that the WWE roster was composed entirely of “pussies”.  Needless to say, the WWE performers were not happy, but their rage made them look ridiculous; Ric Flair, the living legend, appeared laughably dumb when he suggested that Conor would lose a fight to several professional wrestlers who outweigh McGregor by 100 pounds; is that really something worth bragging about?

Conor vs the UFC

Conor’s toughest fight has proven not to be with another fighter, but rather with his employer.

Conor was the first UFC fighter to really talk about money; combatants in the UFC used to brag about being tough guys who would show up to fight anyone at any time; Conor changed that approach.  He started insulting other fighters because of how little money they make, belittling their skills and their value and their intelligence.  All of his images on social media with custom Bentleys and Rolls Royces and fancy clothes and watches inspired more than a little bit of disdain and jealousy from his fellow fighters, but what could they say?   

Similarly, there is only so much that the UFC can do or say when Conor makes demands.  Dana White took his best shot when he decided to pull Conor from UFC 200 after the Irish star refused to do a press conference in America which would have disrupted his training camp.  This led to a very public spat, causing McGregor to temporarily retire, only to then issue a statement saying he still wanted to fight and was just tired of doing endless promotion.  Conor’s rematch with Nate Diaz was moved to UFC 202, which set the PPV buy record for the UFC.  Given his proven ability to draw, Dana White was in no position to refuse Conor’s request to fight for the lightweight belt while still the 145 pound champion. 

Going into his fight with Eddie Alvarez, Conor had more at stake than just another belt for his collection: he had everything arranged to avenge his UFC 200 humiliation.  When he massacred Alvarez, Conor put himself in a position to dictate terms to the UFC; now it was time for Dana White and company to taste the humble pie. 

After winning the lightweight belt at UFC 205, Conor McGregor seized the chance to capitalize on his newfound leverage and issued his ultimatum: no return to the Octagon until his contract was renegotiated, including an ownership stake in the company.  This from a man who, by his own estimate, took home $40 million this year.  I can’t say I blame him; the company’s $4 billion purchase price was largely tenable to the new owners because Conor is such a revenue-driver.  The valuation of the UFC would be much lower without McGregor creating literally hundreds of millions of dollars for the promotion on his own.  If we estimate that UFC 205 did 1.7 million buys, that would give Conor roughly 4.9 million buys for the year from 3 pay per view events.  The other 8 pay per view events of the year have drawn a combined 3.6 million pay per view buys.  The math isn’t that complicated: Conor is worth more to the UFC than all of the other fighters on the roster combined, and it isn’t even close.  At $60 a buy, Conor’s 4.9 million ppv buys brought in $294 million of pay per view revenue (to say nothing of the higher ticket gate and merchandise sales), for an average of $98 million per fight.  The average non-McGregor card brought in $27 million of pay per view revenue.  Conor McGregor is thus worth roughly $70 million dollars a fight to the UFC. 

Given his outsized footprint on business, and given that McGregor holds not one, but two divisions hostage, it appears to be in the UFC’s interests to acquiesce to his demands.  The new UFC owners could try to play hardball, but the truth is that if Conor doesn’t fight for any extended period of time, the UFC will miss out on hundreds of millions of dollars of revenue.  There is nobody else in MMA who can fill his shoes.  Ronda Rousey is a pay per view star as well (on a smaller scale), but she only has a few fights left before retirement (by her own admission), and nobody knows how she will respond to getting knocked unconscious by Holly Holm one year ago.  On the men’s side, Jon Jones is a decent draw but is currently suspended (again), Daniel Cormier is a minor draw, Nate Diaz and Nick Diaz are both conceivably draws if they ever fight again, and Georges St. Pierre, if he comes back, will be a draw again.  That’s it.  Conor is bigger than all of them put together.  It is about time the UFC recognized that they have been outmaneuvered by McGregor; he holds the cards at this point.  To not give in to his demands would entail stripping McGregor of his belts and icing him on the sideline while fighters the fans don’t care about do battle for the belts that McGregor left behind.  Conor knows this, and so does the UFC.  Dana White has publicly acted nonplussed about Conor taking off until at least May to be with his pregnant girlfriend, but with each passing month, as the pay per view buy rates remain low, eventually the UFC will do the right thing for business and give Conor what he has earned.