McGregor’s raring to go
MMA star in fine form before media, plans to toy with Diaz on Saturday
Conor McGregor vowed to climb up the side of the MGM Grand Hotel, rip down the 30-story banner of retired boxing champ Floyd Mayweather Jr. and replace it with his own.
He looked down a banquet table at his upcoming opponent, Nate Diaz, and said, “I will eat his carcass in front of his little gazelle friends and he can do nothing.”
And when asked what would be his dream matchup inside the octagon, McGregor said there was none before reconsidering. “I’d like to fight myself, if I really could,” he said. “Imagine the numbers … if there was two of me.”
On Thursday, as usual, one McGregor was more than enough.
The Irish mixed martial arts
star continued to turn UFC 196, set for Saturday night at the MGM Grand Garden Arena, into the Conor McGregor Show. He arrived wearing a three-piece suit, a gold wristwatch slightly smaller than his featherweight championship belt and the swagger that has catapulted him toward mainstream celebrity.
UFC lists McGregor at 5-9 and 170 pounds, but sometimes his mouth alone seems even bigger.
“I think there’s many scared (expletive) in the fight game,” McGregor, 27, said during the final news conference before fight night. “They don’t take risks, and people that don’t risk will never climb to the next level. “I take risks.” In 2008, against his father’s wishes, McGregor quit his job as a plumber’s apprentice to pursue a career as an MMA fighter.
Since his debut with UFC in 2013, he has taken on all comers, including Diaz when Rafael dos Anjos pulled out with an injured foot less than two weeks before UFC 196.
The latest risk: McGregor, who won his featherweight belt at 145 pounds and was to fight dos Anjos at 155, agreed to fight the larger Diaz at 170.
Asked about the dramatic jump in weight class, McGregor replied with relish, “I don’t give a (expletive) about weight.”
UFC President Dana White, trying to suppress a smile while McGregor skewered Diaz and delighted hundreds of fans who had turned out for the news conference Thursday, recalled his conversation with McGregor after learning dos Anjos had withdrawn from the fight.
“(McGregor) said, ‘I’m going to gym right now. I’ll fight anybody,’ ” White said. “It’s very rare. You don’t see that. Ever.”
McGregor’s meteoric rise has come at the perfect time for the UFC, with Ronda Rousey still uncommitted to a return since getting knocked out in November by Holly Holm. Holm will fight Miesha Tate on Saturday. But even though the UFC has billed it as a co-main event, the McGregor-Diaz fight — well, McGregor — is what has generated interest.
McGregor said he hopes Diaz can last longer than his last opponent. McGregor — 19-2 and undefeated in his last 15 fights — knocked out Jose Aldo Jr. 13 seconds into their December bout.
“I’m certainly going to toy with the young boy,” McGregor said of Diaz, who is 18-10. “I’m going to play with him.”
McGregor arrived more than 30 minutes late for last week’s news conference. The event was competitive as the Irish and Latino fighters exchanged 19 expletives in the opening nine minutes before McGregor’s controversial takedown.
“He’s like a little cholo gangster from the ’hood,” McGregor said of Diaz. “But at the same time he coaches kids’ jiujitsu on a Sunday morning and goes on bike rides with the elderly.
“He makes gun signs with the right hand and animal balloons on the left hand. You’re a credit to the community.”
A week later, McGregor was an hour late for a public workout at MGM Grand on Tuesday and offered no apology or explanation. He walked onto a theater stage, grinned at hundreds of fans who’d been waiting for up to four hours and shook his left fist. The crowd roared. At the end of his spirited workout, he spent about 15 minutes posing for pictures, signing autographs and exchanging fist bumps with fans who adore the fighter who once compared himself to Vincent Van Gogh.
“He dedicated his life to his art and he lost his mind in the process,” McGregor said. “That’s what happened to me.”