LAS VEGAS – UFC president Dana White often calls his promotion’s show the best live sporting event in the world.
Often, that’s hyperbole. Saturday, it was fact.
Perhaps the most enthralling, action-packed, exciting main card in the sport’s history concluded with a pair of breath-taking, jaw-dropping finishes in title fights. It was not only a significant night for the UFC and the fighters who put on quite a show, but also for the sport in general.
It ended with the emergence of a mega-star.
Conor McGregor backed up all the outrageous trash talk with an epic rally in the second round of his match for the interim featherweight title with Chad Mendes at the MGM Grand Garden in the main event of UFC 189.
McGregor was flat on his back, pummeled and pounded for much of the bout as the thousands of his Irish fans who made the trek to this gambling mecca collectively held their breath. But when Mendes tried to advance his position after pounding McGregor from the top for the better part of the second round, things changed dramatically.
McGregor spun out of an attempted choke and dramatically stopped Mendes at 4:57 of the second round.
A tiring Mendes, who took the fight on just two weeks’ notice, backed toward the cage. McGregor pushed forward and landed a punishing right hand. He fired a left immediately behind it that found its target and dropped Mendes.
McGregor quickly finished it to claim the title he bragged for years he’d win. After it was over, he raced to the other side of the cage, grabbed the Irish flag, fell to his knees and wept.
As stunning as it was, it might not have been the most dramatic finish in a title fight on the card.
The co-main event for the welterweight title between Robbie Lawler and Rory MacDonald was a savage, gritty affair that easily took home Fight of the Night honors on a card in which there were numerous worthy candidates.
“You know what I take into account in that fight? Look at Rory MacDonald,” White said. “His nose was broken in the first round. He couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t see. He continued to fight, and it’s looking like a one-sided clinic. Then he hurts Robbie Lawler, right? Then he followed up with 10 head kicks, and doesn’t finish Lawler.
“Lawler hangs in there and makes it through that. I had it 2-2 going into the fifth round. The judges had it [3-1 MacDonald] and other people I talked to in the back had it [3-1]. I’m not a judge, so who cares what I think? Both guys had to feel like, ‘I have to win this last round.’ Both guys were unbelievably hurt. They also had an unbelievable will to win.”
Later, he said, “It was a war and a complete display of chin, heart, grit, dogged determination and the will to win from both guys. When you talk about the fight, it’s [best] fight ever. That’s what I’m talking about.”
He wasn’t overstating it. It was an incredible display of desire and courage that, like so many others on this memorable night, ended in a flash.
Lawler had broken MacDonald’s nose earlier in the fight and pounded it throughout. MacDonald’s face was a bloody mask for much of the night.
Lawler, though, was nearly finished by a furious MacDonald flurry at the end of the third round, when he appeared to be saved by the bell. They fought through a vicious fourth and when it ended, MacDonald held a 3-1 lead in rounds on all three judges’ cards.
But Lawler is one of the hardest punchers in the sport and he’s never out of a fight no matter how much trouble he’s in for that very reason. Early in the fifth, both threw left hands. MacDonald’s barely missed, but Lawler’s landed right on the nose.
It was strong, hard and right on the button. MacDonald crumbled, unable to take any more, and referee John McCarthy stopped it exactly a minute into the final round.
Lawler, whose lip was split and whose face was badly swollen, knew it was everything he’d done up to that point that got him the knockout, not just the straight left.
“That was the accumulation of a beatdown,” Lawler said. “ … I’m the champion and I’m here to stay.”
Lawler and MacDonald posed for a photo in the emergency room of a local hospital, where each had gone to repair their battle wounds.
Hospitals stayed busy on this night.
In the opener on the pay-per-view, Brad Pickett dropped unbeaten Thomas Almeida several times in a fast-paced first round and appeared to break the Brazilian’s nose. But Almeida caught Pickett with a flying knee just 29 seconds into the second round to get the main card off to a great start.
Gunnar Nelson, McGregor’s friend and teammate, submitted Brandon Thatch in 2:54 of the first, setting the stage for perhaps the three finest consecutive fights in UFC history.
Dennis Bermudez and Jeremy Stephens had a wild slugfest, taking turns knocking each other down. Bermudez was up on the cards after two and looking for a takedown to get himself started in the third when he shot in on Stephens, whose back was against the cage.
Stephens timed it and leapt into the air. He caught Bermudez with a perfectly placed knee that ended what seemed at that stage to be a cinch for Fight of the Night.
But in the end, despite all the great fights, it was the Conor McGregor Show, as promised.
White called the show bigger than UFC 100 and said the pay-per-view is trending to finish over 1 million. The gate was a U.S. record $7.2 million and the attendance was a Nevada record 16,019.
It was the largest attended weigh-in in UFC history, with more than 11,000 fans crowding the MGM Grand.
And it was all for the coronation of the sport’s new king.
McGregor carried the show from start to the amazing finish, building it with his words and punctuating it with his fists.
He was supposed to fight featherweight champion Jose Aldo, who pulled out with a rib injury, and he was disdainful toward him afterward.
“Jose is a distant memory and he doesn’t deserve to be spoken of,” McGregor said. “This event, he should have made that walk. I respect Chad for making that walk.”
But McGregor built the show with his willingness to talk to everyone with a recorder or a microphone, to pitch mixed martial arts and to make people want to see him.
It also, but not quite, became too much for him at times, he said.
“It’s damn hard work, and you know, there were times when I said, ‘[Expletive] this. I’m not doing this again,’ ” McGregor said. “Then I get handed the check. And I think, ‘All right.’ ”
He’ll fight Aldo next, whenever both are healed, and it will be another massive show.
Like him or not, McGregor is here to stay. On the UFC’s best night, when the fights were sensational from start to the stunning finish, McGregor was the main man.
“Right now, I’m running this game and I have every record in the book,” McGregor said. “ … I have every record in the sport and at the end of the day, I’m still only 26 years of age. I’m still very young in this game.”
It’s a night, he said, he won’t forget.
On that point, he’s not alone.
