Dennis Siver isn't taking this lying down.
When Siver faces Conor McGregor this Sunday in the main event of UFC Fight Night 59, he'll be doing so against a substantial sentimental head wind. Pretty much every observer, oddsmaker and fan is expecting Siver to lose—decisively—to the Irish phenom in Boston.
The ring leader of these expectations is McGregor himself, who with his typical braggadocio has predicted he will knock Siver out in less than two minutes.
Siver isn't known for his silver tongue, but the Russian-born German kickboxer is now hitting back with the same blunt force that characterizes his approach in the cage.
In an interview with German-language publication Ground and Pound (translation h/t CagePotato), Siver said the McGregor hype is premature, that his previous victory against Dustin Poirier was overrated and that McGregor can take that prediction and insert it into a very specific, very dark area of his own body:
Everyone thinks I’ve already lost the fight. You can’t hype someone after four fights. In his last fight [against Poirier] he has looked good, but the battle was only two minutes or so. For me he landed a fluke punch, because until then, the whole thing was even. And his fights before that were also nothing special. I’m not impressed at all. He promised to beat me in two minutes, but he can stick that prediction in his a--.
Siver went on to predict that it would be he who is on the positive end of a knockout result, and he said he is irritated by McGregor apparently talking trash behind the scenes as well as on the public stage.
"When I finish him on Sunday, I’ll laugh," Siver said in the interview. "I can understand all that s--t talking in front of the camera, but when he does it privately, behind the scenes, that proves to me he is an a-----e."
There is no question McGregor (16-2) has the momentum going into Fight Night 59. His flamboyant style in the cage and on the mic have quickly elevated the 26-year-old to star status, as evidenced by the fact that UFC brass have said he'll get the next shot at the UFC featherweight title (despite only five fights under the UFC banner) if he can handle Siver.
But Siver (22-9-1) is no pushover. If not for a drug test failure that overturned a late 2013 win, Siver would be 4-1 since dropping down to featherweight in 2012.
Scott Harris writes about the serious and less-serious aspects of MMA for Bleacher Report. For more stuff like this, follow Scott on Twitter.
