WEST HOLLYWOOD, CALIF. -- Conor McGregor has taken to watching “Rocky III” in recent weeks, an interesting choice for a fighter on the cusp of the biggest bout of his life.
In the third installment of the legendary film series, Rocky Balboa is a fat and happy world champion who gets knocked off his throne by the gritty and hungry Clubber Lang, prompting Balboa to recommit to his roots and regain the title at the end.
Perhaps even more curious is that McGregor, the UFC interim featherweight champion, says he can identify with both major roles in the movie.
Leading up to his highly anticipated UFC 194 main event with longtime featherweight champion Jose Aldo on Dec. 12 at Las Vegas’ MGM Grand Garden Arena, the Irish firebrand believes that he’s living in Rocky’s world of fame while retaining the desire the up-and-coming Lang displayed in taking the fictional title.
“I was watching 'Rocky III' the other day,” McGregor said. “If you’ve ever seen 'Rocky III', Rocky was doing ads and talk shows and this and that, and Clubber Lang was coming up in the shadows, hungry. I thought maybe that was a reference to that. I’m like Rocky then, I have it all, I do it all, but then I’m still training like Clubber. Still grinding, still hungry.”
Why the sudden focus on finding the balance between comfort and hunger? Perhaps it’s because McGregor just watched the UFC’s other mega drawing card, Ronda Rousey, go down in flames against Holly Holm in Australia. Rousey and McGregor were the twin engines that fueled the UFC’s boom in 2015. After watching from afar as Rousey seemed consumed by drama in the lead-up to the fight, McGregor seems intent on avoiding a similar fate.
“You can learn from everything,” McGregor said. “I don’t know, I can’t really see her situation from the inside, but from looking at where she’s at from outside, it looked like maybe she was doing a little too much on the media side. That coupled with her personal life that I don’t know about, maybe could have hampered her training a little bit. That combined with the particular style of Holly, made her a little bit too emotionally invested.”
Perhaps that’s also why McGregor has noticeably toned down the bluster as we reach the final countdown to a long-anticipated fight with Aldo. The last we heard of McGregor around these parts was back in September, when McGregor all but hijacked a press event in Las Vegas hyping the UFC’s fall slate of fights.
On that afternoon, McGregor seemed interested in picking a fight with the entire UFC roster, as he bragged about everything from his money to his ostentatious clothing. There will be plenty of words exchanged between McGregor and Aldo over the next week and change, but for now, McGregor seems to be turning inward as he hurtles toward the defining moment of his career.
“I don’t really think about Jose,” McGregor said. “I’m thinking about more of my focus on me. It’s been a long road to get here and I’m still not there yet, so, when Jose touches down on American soil, I might start to think more of it, but this is my job. I’m focused on me.”
Of course, it could also be that the Dubliner is simply sick of having to think about Aldo. Aldo, the only featherweight champion in UFC history and the lineal titleholder since winning what was then called the WEC title in Nov. 2009, has been on McGregor’s radar ever since he arrived in the UFC in 2013.
They’ve been all but joined at the hip since McGregor downed Dennis Siver in a January bout in Boston, then hopped out of the cage to yell at Aldo, who was seated cageside. Anyone who follows the sport can tell you the story that has unfolded since: The announcement of a bout between the two scheduled for July; a worldwide media tour; Aldo pulling out of the bout due to a rib injury; McGregor then facing Chad Mendes on two weeks’ notice at UFC 189 and rallying to finish him late in the second round.
“Everything happens for a reason,” McGregor said. “They gave me an opportunity, for all those people who said I was protected, they said, ‘No way are they going to put him in with an American wrestler, they don’t want to sacrifice the cash cow,’ and all that [expletive] I was hearing for a long, long time. Not only do they give me an American wrestler, they gave me an American wrestler on two weeks' notice. So it was an opportunity to go out and do that. If anything, I’m happy it shakes out the way it did. It makes this even bigger now.”
Although many thousands of words will be written in the next week, as far as McGregor is concerned, there’s little left to learn about an opponent he’s studied for quite some time.
“I don’t need to gather any more intel, do any more research,” McGregor said. “Every time, if they’re not a wrestler, they’ll become a panic wrestler. They all are the same. They go in, we exchange, they panic, when a human panics, the first thing they do is grab. When they’re hit, whether they train for it or not, they grab. I’m facing a panicked wrestler like I always face.”
Whether McGregor can move Aldo into a state of panic should help determine whether he finishes this chapter of his career like Rocky or like Clubber.
Follow Dave Doyle on Twitter: https://twitter.com/davedoylemma
