Issue 129

June 2015

How Conor McGregor became the fighter who will carry the hopes of an entire nation to the Octagon at UFC 189

From the kid in Crumlin to the King of Dublin, Conor McGregor’s rise and rise is some journey. The portrait of the mixed martial artist as a young man, as described by close friends, teachers, and an extremely close-knit family, is the story of a sporting life that found its niche early.

Yet behind the scenes, McGregor was honing a skill set that would explode after a decade of intense study, allied with physical and mental rigor. 

McGregor’s inception into the UFC two years ago was simply the perfect storm after a long, dedicated build-up; a storm in the same sense a perfect trinity had been formed when the family moved from Crumlin when he was a teenager, bringing the young man into a training group, which included former UFC fighter Tom Egan and coach John Kavanagh. Mixed martial arts became their religion.

But right from the very start, it appears ‘The Notorious’ was born to fight. According to his family, that warrior spirit was evident from as early as his birth. McGregor’s mother Margaret recalls that he was “born with his fists clenched.” Even the midwife, in those first few minutes, pointed out that he was going to be a fighter.

Yet Tony McGregor, Conor’s father, is at pains to point out to Fighters Only that his son was “like any other normal kid growing up” in his tough neighborhood. Yet McGregor, who dabbled briefly and unhappily as a trainee plumber, might equally have been a lawyer or barrister, more on that later.

It’s worth recalling Conor’s description of his life in Crumlin as he remembers it. “My neighborhood, Crumlin, is synonymous with gang culture in this country,” he explains. “There were grenades getting put through people’s letterboxes. Before we moved, we were in a rough estate with a lot of crime.”

He was 13 when they moved. It meant a new area, a new school. “I resented my parents for moving us,” McGregor adds. “But it worked out perfectly because it allowed me to get away for a while. It allowed me to get away from people who went down the wrong path. When it came to training, I could just focus on training and nothing else.

“My father worked very, very hard and took a chance. He built a house from foundation level – he got it from the plans – and these things don’t always come true. He took a risk and worked his ball sack off to get us in a good house.”

McGregor Sr. looks back on the time in Crumlin, recalling that with his fast wit and fearlessness, young Conor had become a leader of his pack. If there was anything going on he was in the middle of it. But deeper trouble, thankfully, never came. “I didn’t see fearlessness in him as a kid. But I didn’t see fear, either,” Conor’s father recalls.

Though boxing was Conor’s first combat pursuit, it wasn’t, his first athletic outlet. As a child, he followed soccer and played the game. Conor was a Manchester United fan, and aged seven, with a mop of blond hair, was to be seen kitted out in the red and white of The Red Devils.

McGregor played for Lourdes Celtic and other local clubs, but in his early teens, he opened the door to Crumlin Boxing Club. He didn’t look back. There was history in boxing on the paternal side, which may have had an influence on him.

“When I was coming of age at 17 in the mid to late ‘70s, we had no sporting icons to aspire to,” explains McGregor Sr. “There was nothing on the sporting horizon for the Irish fans. We had a decent rugby team on their day but that was about it. We had nothing in golf, tennis, soccer. We were short on sporting icons. I wouldn’t have been a fight fan because there was nobody to follow.

“Barry McGuigan and Steve Collins came along later when I was more mature. I remember when McGuigan beat Eusebio Pedroza. I would have been 25 at the time. McGuigan was the first big sporting guy in the modern era to come out of Ireland.”

Boxing, then, was the first influence. “Conor had a brief liaison with boxing and I always knew he had capable skills as a boxer,” he adds. “Boxing would have been close to our family because my father was a boxer as well. He was a championship boxer, but only at amateur level. He never progressed. Work and life got in the way of things, as it does for most people. 

“Funnily enough for Conor, life doesn’t get in the way for him. Work is his life. For the majority of people, though, they don’t have the luxury of engaging in full-on sport because life gets in the way, unfortunately.

“I also had a really brief dalliance with boxing as a school kid. I never followed it through. Fighting didn’t have the same interest for me.

“Conor wasn’t more remarkable than anyone else as a small kid. My interest would have been to get him educated first, to be honest. But I also knew I had a good left hook, by the way. And does get that from the McGregor clan.”

McGregor Sr. describes his son’s upbringing as “very normal.” His early years were like any other Dublin boy. 

“We’d holiday at the Costa del Sol (Spain),” he says “It would just be a regular family holiday in the sun. He didn’t really want for anything. He had all the latest toys, the latest PlayStation and the latest bike. There was nothing outstanding about his upbringing. That’s what makes it all the more remarkable for us.

“He just had a love of mixed martial arts. It took over his teenage life. He reveled in it. He loved every aspect of it. As a young kid, he would have been into the Wrestlemania guys – ‘Stone Cold’ Steve Austin and so on.”

New beginnings

But it was the move from Crumlin that had worked out perfectly for young Conor. Tony McGregor had been deeply motivated to provide a stable home for his young family.

“I got married in my 20s and it was always my goal to buy a nice little house somewhere and settle down with a family,” he says. “That’s the only thing I could do. I worked as a taxi driver for most of my mature life. 

“Those days in Dublin it was a good way of earning some money. I worked weekends, I worked all the bank holidays. I just worked and probably got a nicer house than we should have done given my background. That was one of my biggest achievements in life, actually. When he was in his mid-teens we moved from Crumlin to a bigger house in County Dublin.

“He was a young kid in the first year at secondary school and when we moved into a new area it meant he had to get a new school and enroll in a new secondary school. That must have been tough on a little 14-year-old kid who had all these aspirations in his head that I wasn’t aware of. 

“It’s kudos to Conor for being able to overcome that as a young boy. He was put in a different area, all his mates were left behind and he had to find a new school.

“He met Tom Egan in that school and Tom’s love of mixed martial arts rubbed off on him. The thing exploded in both of their heads and they found an avenue to explore their love for MMA. 

“Once he found his niche, he knew he was going to make it. It’s great that a teenage kid could find that. It’s rare that a teenager knows exactly what they want and knows how to get it. He found it with John Kavanagh and he found it with Tom Egan. Once that happened, that was it. He knew exactly what he wanted. He had that natural instinct, that talent, that natural fighting skill. It’s all instinct to him. Not many people have that.”

Conor concurs. “That (move) was a blessing in disguise for me,” he admits. “I hated it at the time. But when I moved house, I moved school and that’s when I met Tom Egan. That’s how I got into MMA. It was a perfect storm of things that happened to get me here.”

McGregor’s wingman – who became the first Irishman to fight in the UFC in Dublin in January 2009 – became the perfect martial arts ally when McGregor switched schools and areas. “It was fourth year, fifth year of high school or something like that; I remember seeing Conor,” Egan recalls, painting a picture of McGregor with his chest puffed out, surveying his new environment.

Egan introduced himself and their love of martial arts just blossomed. While other kids went to play soccer during gym class, they were in the weights room. They talked martial arts incessantly. They clicked. “I could tell Conor had such a big personality. We kind of had two different types of personalities that fed off each other. I knew way back then that he would make something of himself, some way or another.”

That led the pair into the path of coach Kavanagh and his Straight Blast Gym. “When those three collided, that was it then,” explains McGregor Sr. “It was always going to result in some kind of success. Tom had the first shot at it. They were about 15 at the time and they were actually on the circuit. They had even given radio interviews way back then. It was great to see young kids giving interviews about their passion for sport and for life.”

His son was still frequenting Crumlin, too. There were ties that strengthened Conor’s life. “I’d get the call at half 10 or 11 at night to go and pick him up and bring him home. But I had no problem with him hanging out in the old area,” his father says.

“We had great years living in Crumlin. We lived there for about 13 years. Conor was born and spent his formative years there. There are some great people in Crumlin. 

“You just have to be streetwise. You don’t have to do anything, but you have to be aware. Drugs have ravished most areas and that happened to Crumlin. Overall, though, it’s a nice, respectful, working-class area.”

Ahead of the curve

Still, to McGregor Sr., the signs of the fighting icon that Conor is today were not fully there. But there were hints, perhaps.

“Conor was funny, he was humorous,” he says. “He didn’t get himself into too much trouble around the house. He was a fairly normal kid. He wouldn’t be the center of attention. He’d blend more into the background. He wouldn’t be the joker of the pack. He could command an audience, but he wouldn’t put himself forward to be the center of attention in a large gathering.”

But McGregor Sr. still had concerns nine years ago when Conor left school at 16. “He never had an interest in taking education further. He had the academic ability but he never had the interest. When it was time to make a choice, I think he knew what he wanted to do. He was ahead of the curve. He was certainly ahead of his family in that respect. The career took me totally by surprise. I didn’t see a career in it at all.

“By the time he’d won two titles in Cage Warriors, we were 100% behind him. I was still a bit concerned, though. He was getting probably 2,000 euro paychecks, not bad for a kid his age.”

But there were still concerns about his long-term financial future. Fighters Only can reveal that one of McGregor’s teachers advised him to look into a career as a lawyer, given his ability to uncover and analyze detail.

“One of his teachers at secondary school said he had the intelligence to become a lawyer. He just didn’t have the interest, though,” explains Tony.

Given what we now know of the fighter, it isn’t unthinkable to picture McGregor strutting in a courtroom, fingers in his lapels, defending or attacking as a barrister and spokesman. He’d still get to flaunt his famous suits, after all.

What concerned his father were the careers and earning power others had. That included Conor’s final opponent in Cage Warriors before he got the call to sign for the UFC. 

“Ivan Buchinger had something like 22 fights and was much more experienced,” he recalls. “Conor was a young kid at the time. Buchinger just had this maturity about him and his record did take me back a bit I just had a slight worry about that. Here was a guy who was pushing 30, had 22 fights and the sport still wasn’t rewarding for him. I just didn’t want to see Conor floating around these divisions when he was pushing 30.”

History in the making

UFC president Dana White now counts McGregor as one of the stars of the organization. The 145lb world title contest with José Aldo set to demand a gate of $7 million in Las Vegas in July. Pay-per-view figures are projected to surpass a million buys.

“Guys in the fight business, real fighters, they’re born that way. The Conor McGregors, the Ronda Rouseys, the José Aldos, these people are born that way,” White tells FO.

“All fans like different things. Some people like José Aldo’s style, other people love the Conor McGregor style. More people are going to love – or hate – the showman. José Aldo hasn’t had a guy fight him in a while who went after him. Chad Mendes went after him. He went after him physically to try and take him out. That’s when the real José Aldo comes out.

“That’s why I love this fight. That’s why I put this fight on the level I did. I know how people think and I know what people want – and this is the fight. Conor McGregor came out and showed everybody he’s a killer, man. This kid comes to kill you. 

“He comes to take you out, finish you. When you do that with José Aldo, holy s**t, you’re going to have an amazing fight on your hands. They’re two of the best fighters in the world, in the prime of their life, going after the belt.

“Conor is not just good at the talking and everything else, he’s good at every type of warfare there is in the business. The mental warfare, the physical warfare, the whole thing. This whole thing has been a mind game between them.”

White shakes his head describing the intimacy of the 10-day, eight-city media tour in March. “José is like, ‘Ok, you like to talk, whatever, but don’t ever put your f**king hands on me. You put your f**king hands on me, there’s going to be a problem.’ There’s this back and forth between them and it’s been fascinating to be around.”

Family ties

Meanwhile, McGregor and his family are enjoying his journey from boy to man; from struggling mixed martial artist who tried plumbing and who once joined the queue for unemployment benefits, to an international fight-sports star who commands an audience whenever he sets foot in a room.

Today, the fighter’s family – his parents, his elder sisters Aiofe and Erin, plus her daughter Taylor – are enjoying his success close-up. They travel to all his fights.

“The whole family enjoys Conor’s success. Who wouldn’t enjoy it? We’re all very aware of how lucky we are,” explains Tony.

If life is water, then the river that is McGregor’s career is free-flowing. Dee Devlin, McGregor’s long-term girlfriend, from Walkinstown, says the mixed martial artist “doesn’t shut off.” Margaret, Conor’s mother, sits cageside, but doesn’t watch his contests.

“His mother might display some nervousness, but she won’t actually physically watch the fight even if she’s at ringside,” explains Tony. “I give her a second-by-second account of the fight. 

“He’s a mama’s boy at heart. Irish mums don’t like letting their sons go. They like keeping them on the apron strings. I’m not saying he’s a mummy’s boy, but he’s had more of an association with his mother.

“I have to say, it might be cocky, but we never fear the worst. We always look forward to a victory. We do enjoy the occasion because we know he’s going to be victorious and that’s the end of it.”

McGregor’s only concern was for his son’s future, when the young man gave up everything for a sport they knew “nothing” about. That’s changed, of course, as it has become a career in which he can secure his future, and perhaps those of his own children when they’re born.

“We’re in it for the long haul, regardless of whether he’s a success or failure even at this level. We’re totally immersed in it,” says the 26-year-old’s father. “I’m immensely proud of what he’s done. I understand the saying ‘bursting with pride’ because there have been times when I’ve felt like I was bursting with pride. 

“My son has proved me wrong in his life and I’m delighted that he’s proved me wrong. Not many dads will say that. He knows how to play a crowd and he knows how to play his opponent as well. It’s just like a natural instinct to him. I don’t know where he gets it from. I just enjoy what he does. We all do. To see it unfold before our eyes is a great feeling.”

From ordinary kid to ‘Notorious’ MMA fighter. From boy to man. The next chapter could be written by McGregor in the sand and dust of Las Vegas this summer. A nation awaits the king of Dublin to pronounce himself on the world.

The Notorious

Conor McGregor’s notoriety, and growing fame in Ireland, not least through a six-part series on Irish free-to-air channel RTÉ 2 and his appearances on the country’s longest running chat show, The Late, Late Show, has also earned the mixed martial artist some critics.

Television critic Liam Fay, writing in the Irish Sunday Times newspaper, had a sharpened pen for The Notorious television series. The acerbic Fay wrote: “Climbing to the top of the professional game also requires mastery of another form of self-defense: gale-force bluster. 

“Much of McGregor’s chatter seems to be the nervous twitching of a guy who can’t quite believe his luck. Two years ago, the 26-year-old Crumlin native was a plumber. The prospect of 40 years with his nose in a U-bend steeled his determination to parlay his aptitude for combat sports into fame and fortune. He relishes the tacky, wacky, often panto-like aspects of the modern warrior business.”

The Notorious reality series, which was directed by Patrick Timmons, concluded at a Hollywood movie studio with McGregor shooting a commercial. It was, reckoned Fay, “almost impossible to tell where the advert ended and the ‘reality’ show began.” Perhaps that’s the beauty of all this.

Even Irish Mail columnist Joe Duffy condoned Dublin Senator Catherine Noone’s description of MMA as “vile.”

“One of the problems about daring to criticize mixed martial arts is the personality that is the charismatic Conor McGregor. McGregor has done for cage fighting what Michael Flatley did for Irish dancing,” wrote Duffy. Again, veiled praise.

Despite the critics, McGregor’s popularity among his fellow countrymen seems unaffected. Just ask the 2,500 rabid fans who turned up to the UFC 189 World Tour press conference in March to cheer on their hero as he stole José Aldo’s belt, taunted the champion and declared himself “The King of Dublin.” Few would argue with that title.

Warrior spirit

Aged 20, Conor McGregor became emboldened when he met his heroes – including Chuck Liddell, Dana White and Bruce Buffer – when the UFC visited Dublin in 2009. McGregor, fresh-faced and excited, was famously pictured with ‘The Iceman’. 

The fire, already burning, had been stoked and fanned. The warrior spirit was now emerging. “My eldest brother was big into that a few years ago. He wanted to look up the lineage,” explained Tony.

“I don’t think he went that far back, though. He must have lost interest. But we must have sort of warrior lineage. The name McGregor is steeped into Celtic warrior folklore.”

That’s something Conor himself has spoken of poetically, almost like a fighting ballad. “The Irish passion for fighting comes from a long history of battle,” he said.

“We have a troubled nation; we fought for our independence, we fought for our freedom. I know my ancestors and my bloodline is on the battlefield; they were doing it riding a horse with a sword, swinging an axe. Now I’m doing it in the Octagon.”