It’s way too early to start dreaming about how Conor McGregor might fare in the UFC lightweight division.
Not that anyone needs a reminder, but McGregor still has unfinished business in his natural weight class. His featherweight title unification bout against Jose Aldo remains on the books for UFC 194. After that, Frankie Edgar wants a piece, and Chad Mendes intends to show what he can do with a full training camp under his belt.
But a curious thing happened last Friday, as McGregor single-handedly seized control of the UFC’s gala “Go Big” press conference. (NSFW Language in video)
OK, fine, two curious things.
For starters—and for the first time since he showed up in the Octagon more than two years ago—the Conor McGregor Show started to feel a little played out.
It was probably wishful thinking to imagine the 27-year-old Irish phenom could share the stage with a dozen of the UFC’s other stars and mind his manners. After all, it’s not McGregor’s business to make nice.
It’s his business to make headlines—and business never stops booming.
Previous to Friday’s communal media event, it was easy to cast McGregor as the rising tide that lifts all boats. His spoken word performances were a revelation for the resurgent UFC, and during 2015 the fighter posted some of the biggest pay-per-view numbers in what might turn out to be the company’s biggest year since 2010.
On this occasion, however, McGregor was a tidal wave, drowning out everyone around him. What was meant as an ensemble kickoff for the UFC’s biggest fights of the next few months turned into a one-man gab session.
McGregor beefed, blustered and bloviated the way few other fighters on the UFC roster can. If later reports from Dana White can be believed, he also did most of it with his fly unzipped. It was classic McGregor, and this time it bordered on overload.
The UFC didn’t bring him in to make the rest of its roster look like suckers, but that was the end result. Up there on the dais surrounded by his peers, McGregor seemed less like a lovable little master of self promotion than a guy who believes too much of his own press.
“I’m the money fight at all [male] weight divisions,” he crowed at one point, before slamming his corporate branded microphone back down on the table, “so f--k everybody else up here.”
It would have been tempting to tune him out completely after the first few minutes, if not for the second curious thing that happened:
We got to see McGregor rub custom-made elbow patches with No. 1 lightweight contender Donald Cerrone—and the results were pure magic.
“He’s real good at talking out in front of the public, but when we all stand in the back he ain’t got nothing to say,” Cerrone said of McGregor during the presser. “I stood back there for 30 minutes right next to him and he didn’t have nothing to say to me. He’s was very cordial with this man [Mendes] next to me. Of course we get out here and he wants to run his mouth.”
McGregor’s threats to forsake the featherweight division after UFC 194 are nothing new. He has included a lightweight run in his long-term plans for a while now.
But seeing him work the mic opposite Cerrone—and to a lesser extent, 155-pound champion Rafael dos Anjos—was like getting slapped in the face with a secret that has been hiding in plain sight this whole time.
McGregor trying his luck in MMA’s most competitive weight class suddenly seems like a good way for the UFC to take absolutely all of my money, no matter what happens against Aldo a few months from now.
It could be that McGregor sensed that, too.
“I can make you rich,” he declared to dos Anjos. “I’ll change your bum life. When you sign to fight me, it’s a celebration. You ring back home, you ring your wife [and say] ‘Baby, we done it. We’re rich, baby. Conor McGregor made us rich. Break out the red panties.’”
McGregor pitting himself against these lightweights was grand theater—as well as a shrewd bit of maneuvering from one of the UFC’s most adept political operators. Even if Aldo obliterates him on December 12—an outcome that seems as likely as any—he could tumble into his next big money feud against Cerrone, and no one would give a hoot.
And if he wins? Add dos Anjos to the list alongside Edgar and Mendes as guys we’d happily sign up to watch McGregor fight.
Perhaps as a happy accident, McGregor suddenly finding new guys to get chesty with kept his act from seeming completely tired during the latest in a seemingly endless string of press obligations.
Last week, he hosted a media lunch in Los Angeles. This week his stint as a coach on season 22 of The Ultimate Fighter debuts on Fox Sports 1. It’s possible he knows he needs new challenges to keep himself fresh in the face of so much exposure.
Aldo was on stage with him, of course, and they were back at each other's throats. But we’ve watched the two of them do the man dance for months now.
Even when they butted heads during their obligatory staredown—seriously, how many times have they done this? A thousand?—the most interesting part was Cerrone briefly rising from his chair, as if considering getting involved in the scuffle (More NSFW language):
We should be kicking ourselves for not noticing sooner, but it turns out Cerrone is pretty much a perfect foil for McGregor.
His laidback, downhome appeal stands in perfect opposition to McGregor’s constant fuming. His cowboy boots flawlessly offset McGregor’s handmade brogans. While McGregor posts social media pictures of himself lounging in a python-skin chair, Cerrone posts pics of his new nail gun.
(He broke the old nail gun when he fell off of the roof of a house he’s building, he says.)
The only thing they have in common is that Cerrone loves to fight as much as McGregor complains he can’t find himself a competitive one.
Where has this matchup been our whole lives?
Answer: In different weight classes.
Regardless of what happens against Aldo three months from now—and regardless of what happens in Cerrone’s fight with dos Anjos on December 19—McGregor nabbing a couple of fights at lightweight suddenly appears too good to pass up.
Perhaps in 2016, it can become more than just a dream.
