McGregor is ready to raise bar

CONOR McGREGOR has gone from boxing in a bar to fighting on the biggest stage in Las Vegas.

It was more than a decade ago, when he was a member of Crumlin Amateur Boxing Club in Dublin. There, he would compete in shows in the bar out the back of the National Stadium – the only purpose-built boxing arena in the world – and club events in Crumlin.

The apprentice plumber turned MMA star is unsure which venue staged his last outing but his remarkable rise is shown by the fact that, in the early hours of tomorrow, he will step out in front of 19,000 fans at the T-Mobile Arena in the fight capital of the world to face the unbeaten Floyd Mayweather.

“It was not that long ago I was training to be a plumber,” he said. “It has been a great journey. I racked up so much experience in Crumlin.”

While his memory is hazy on his last boxing match, his memories of competing in exhibition bouts are vivid. “Every Thursday they used to have this club show and other clubs would come to the gym,” he said. “There was actually no weigh-in for the club shows. You would roll in and see what other clubs had come.

“The coach, Phil Sutcliffe, would pick someone and say, ‘You’re going to face him’. There was always the joke that Phil was going to put you in with light-heavyweights even though you were only 60kg. ‘Off you go kid, you’re going to fight him’.

“That was the way I was brought into the game.”

Even one of his former opponents arrived into camp for this fight when a sparring partner could not make it. McGregor said: “Early in this camp in Ireland, one of the sparring partners came in and I knew his face so I said, ‘Where do I know you from?’

“It turns out I actually boxed him twice in the Crumlin shows, so we had a spar.”

McGregor turned his back on boxing aged about 17 and focused on MMA before eventually becoming a two-weight UFC champion.

He has gone from the dole queue collecting £150 a week to being a multi-millionaire thanks to his work in the octagon. And his life changed again more recently after the birth of his first child, Conor Jnr.

The Irishman added: “It has been an eye-opening experience.

“As a fighter, I’m a bit more ruthless maybe and a bit more dangerous because there’s another one now that I’m providing for.”