Conor McGregor and the Law of Attraction, 'the most powerful thing in the world'

LAS VEGAS — Conor McGregor started visualizing before he even realized what the word meant.

Like so many kids, his childhood soccer games on the streets of Dublin took on an element of fantasy. He would see himself starring in a grand stadium, scoring the winning goal for Manchester United or playing in a World Cup for the Irish national team.

The journey McGregor (21-3 MMA, 9-1 UFC) will complete on Saturday night, when he takes on Floyd Mayweather (49-0 boxing) in a boxing ring just off the famed Las Vegas Strip and perhaps pockets $100 million-plus for his trouble, has been in many ways even more improbable than those fledgling soccer dreams of his youth.

It’s a tiny percentage, but Irish kids do make it to Manchester United. Some of them have gone on to play at a World Cup. But boys from Crumlin and Lucan and Clondalkin don’t grow up to be UFC champions – at least not until McGregor came along. And, before McGregor, UFC fighters didn’t win titles in two divisions. And they don’t move into boxing and secure a fight with the biggest name in the game. And they certainly don’t stand to make nine figures in a single night.

That’s the reality McGregor is now days from and is one he created in his mind before putting it into practice.

“It is the Law of Attraction, and it is the most powerful thing in the world,” McGregor said. “It is the belief that you are able to create whatever situation that you want for yourself, and no one can take it from you. It is believing something is already yours, and then doing whatever you have to so that it comes true.”

The Law of Attraction is an ideology that dates to the 19th century but enjoyed a resurgence in popularity thanks to a 2006 book and movie, The Secret, by Rhonda Byrne. Around that time, McGregor’s older sister Erin, a fitness model, suggested he try some of its teachings.

“It didn’t resonate,” McGregor told USA TODAY Sports recently. “It was my sister and I was like, ‘Nah, shut up you.’ But it did (click) eventually, and I’ve been working it since. I’d been hearing and reading about it, and then I noticed it coming into play.”

The theory’s core principles are that anything is possible and that an individual can imagine a new reality for themselves and by vocalizing those desires can “speak them into existence.”

Before joining the UFC, McGregor would sit in his beat-up car in Dublin after collecting his welfare checks and imagine himself driving along a coastal road in Southern California, in a soft-top Bentley. He has one now, and he’s done the drive.

While still fighting in Ireland’s Cage Warriors circuit he’d imagine himself not only in the UFC but also its champion. He imagined himself defeating Jose Aldo by early knockout and told anyone who would listen how it would go down. He predicted Aldo’s hand would flinch, that the Brazilian champion – undefeated in a decade – would miss, and then be put away. Ultimately, 13 seconds was all it took.

“If you can see it here and you have the courage enough to speak it, it will happen,” McGregor said. “I see these shots and sequences, and I don’t shy away from them. A lot of time people believe in certain things, but they keep it to themselves. They don’t put it out there. If you truly believe in it, if you become vocal with it, you are creating that Law of Attraction, and it will become reality.”

McGregor didn’t sit back, splitting a pair of hugely lucrative bouts with Nate Diaz, then fulfilling his prophecy by beating Eddie Alvarez and winning the UFC lightweight belt, his second. He wanted bigger, better, richer. Which brings us to the biggest night of McGregor’s career and the greatest test of his predictive powers.

A year ago the idea of a Mayweather-McGregor fight seemed insane, but the more McGregor talked, the more that very insanity took hold. Before long Mayweather began to see dollar signs, and social media lit up, and suddenly here we are in fight week, with billboards touting the fight up and down the Strip.

And now here is McGregor saying that he not only has arrived in the world of boxing but also can name the round of his knockout victory, which was initially four but has been brought down to two after smaller eight-ounce gloves were approved.

For all the prognostications he has made, this is the wildest. And few believe it will transpire. Boxing wisdom, the betting line, heck, even just plain old common sense, screams he has no chance. But Conor McGregor has heard those voices before and drowned them out. He won’t be shaken from the belief that this is his destiny, because he says it’s so.

“This, the way I think and the way my mind goes, it is unstoppable,” McGregor said. “I can’t tell you exactly what it is, but it (expletive) works.”

For more on “The Money Fight: Floyd Mayweather vs. Conor McGregor,” check out the MMA Rumors section of the site.