Issue 109

December 2013

Ireland’s Conor McGregor is only two fights into his UFC career and currently laid up with a knee injury, but he’s already getting the all-star treatment. Fighters Only traveled to LA to catch up with "The Notorious" featherweight star.

Before Conor McGregor walked out for his fight with Max Holloway in Boston, the TD Garden Arena was cloaked in darkness. The lights were turned out; a hush descended. Screens showed McGregor, draped in the Irish flag, slowly making his way into the auditorium from the backstage depths and the arena exploded.

The eruption that accompanied his emergence from the tunnel in August was, perhaps, one of the loudest in UFC history. Only then did the lights flash on. Cheers washed over McGregor as he prepared to fight for the first time in the spiritual home of Irish America.

His entrance was what is known as a ‘blackout,’ and they are usually reserved for the main event and occasionally the co-main event, particularly if there is a belt on the line. For such treatment to be afforded to a fighter on the undercard is unheard of. But it’s just another example of the unique aura surrounding the 25-year-old Dubliner.

Unfortunately, he tore his anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) in his left knee in defeating Holloway. His initial concern was only that he didn’t finish the fight, but it soon became clear the ligament tear was a serious one. McGregor has been in Los Angeles ever since, being treated by top specialists at the UFC’s expense.

Recovery is going well but it’s a long, drawn-out process. McGregor’s knee is still heavily taped and he only recently came off crutches. Walking any kind of distance is at least mildly painful. On a daily basis, he has to undergo mobility exercises to ensure the recovering ligament maintains flexibility and elasticity. It will be past the spring of 2014 before he is back in the Octagon. Unsurprisingly, he’s restless.

“Everyone is on my radar. I just want to get back and compete. I feel superior – in my mind, in everything. I feel I have an edge over every one of them. I am going to open the division up and show them what it’s really about,” McGregor tells Fighters Only over a couple of sizzling steaks at the Palomino restaurant in LA’s Westwood district.

Palomino is a smart Italian bistro: all dark wood tables, low lighting and leather chairs. The male patrons look smart, the women chic. Pianos tinkle softly in the background. Into this environment McGregor had bounded moments earlier. He’s wearing cut-off Bermuda shorts, canvas pumps, a backwards baseball cap and a plain red T-shirt so tight it might as well be a rash guard. Yet nobody bats an eyelid; we aren’t far from Hollywood here.

Despite his locale, McGregor is in full flow. “There are so many rookies in there,” he says. “There are 400 (fighters) signed to the UFC? Honestly, I believe 300 of them are rookies. You could sack 300 of them and I wouldn’t bat an eyelid. There’s about 100 solid martial artists from what I can tell. If I was the cut-man, there would be a lot of cuts getting handed out.”

McGregor has been accused of arrogance after making such utterances in the past. True, he says things people consider outrageous. But what if, months and years from now, those things turn out merely to be accurate predictions made with confidence?

Chael Sonnen faced similar criticism prior to his first fight with Anderson Silva. It stopped when he backed his words up and nearly took the belt in the process. Sonnen and McGregor share some parallels. McGregor thinks his own division’s champion is overrated, and he has his sights locked on him.

“Who do I feel is a match for me at featherweight? He’s not in the UFC yet,” he says without a second’s hesitation. “It’s not José Aldo. People think he is special; I don’t think he’s special. Even if you listen to the current contenders – Ricardo Lamas, Cub Swanson – they are talking like he’s the Anderson Silva of the weight class. I don’t feel like that. They are fighting for a chance, for a shot. I’m taking it. It’s mine. I am going to take it with ease.

“I don’t see anything that jumps off the page about Aldo. Southpaws cause him trouble. People talk about his Muay Thai – he broke his foot throwing a misplaced kick in his last fight. It’s not easy putting that leg kick on a southpaw, you’ll hit that kneecap.

“What else has he got? He’s small.

His wrestling’s good, his boxing’s not great, his jiu-jitsu is alright. He hasn’t finished anyone in a while. I would

feel confident going in against him. I would feel confident going in against

any of them.”

McGregor laughs loudly when asked if he is the Irish Chael Sonnen. “I don’t know. I am not trying to be anyone but me. You’re here now because of what’s going on with me. Ask someone who was there before all this was going on, I am still the same person,” he says.

“I’m still believing in myself. Still talking s**t. It’s no different. But I do look to take from everyone, and you definitely look to take from Chael’s ability to handle the media.”

Whatever comparisons people wish to draw, McGregor is undoubtedly his own man. Over dinner he talks about his self-confidence being simultaneously innate and an active process. As a child he dreamt big. As an adult he made a firm commitment to actively chase those dreams and to make them happen.

“I’ve seen my visions happen before my eyes. I can predict the future. Not all of it’s happened yet but I know it’s going to, because a lot of it has. Daydreaming, visualizing, whatever you want to call it. I’ve been a dreamer all my life,” he says.

“I wanted to be a footballer as a kid. I’d run home from school, put on the full kit – socks, boots, everything – run into the field across from our house in Crumlin and kick the ball around. Score a goal and run off celebrating. In my own eight-year-old head, I was playing on TV.

“I knew I was on to something, I just didn’t know what, until I found combat. Until I found martial arts. I won a junior title when I was boxing but I was never full-on with it. I don’t know when I was like, ‘I’m gonna do this fighting thing,’ because I was already doing it, y’know?

“I remember when I saw the UFC for the first time on Bravo, it was around the same time I met Tom Egan at school. He used to do jiu-jitsu, I was boxing. We’d bounce off each other, meet up and train. I’d stay at his house for the weekends and we’d teach each other things.”

He admits: “We knew nothing really. Back then I thought I knew everything. I think I know everything now. But looking back, I realize I knew nothing back then. I wonder in five years will I look back at this moment in time and realize I knew nothing now either?”

McGregor looks back at a lot of things. He has come a long way – literally, metaphorically and mentally. The UFC has put him up in Westwood, an affluent suburb of north-central Los Angeles. Sunset Boulevard runs across its northern boundary, Beverly Hills lies to its east. He is thousands of miles from home and an immeasurable distance from the Crumlin estate on which he was born.

Crumlin is an Anglicization of the Irish name Croimghlinn, meaning ‘Crooked Glen.’ There is some irony in the Gaelic meaning because Crumlin is a district of some notoriety and has produced more than a few crooked characters of its own.

McGregor could very easily have become one of them. At times he did, though he has drawn a veil over this period and will confess only to doing “this and that” to pay the bills as an unemployed teenager who lived only for training and the weekend. Not necessarily in that order.

McGregor’s trainer John Kavanagh, Ireland’s first BJJ black belt and a pioneer of MMA in the country, has known him a long time. He saw something in McGregor from day one and did everything he could to help him realize that dream. On at least one occasion he stepped in to pay a debt McGregor had with “serious people” who took a very physical approach to debt collection.

“Whatever situations I ever put John in – and there were some sticky ones – he always stood by me, helped me, welcomed me back to the gym. John was always telling me to forget all this messing about and get back in the gym, telling me what I was capable of and what I could do,” McGregor says. He is notably passionate about this subject.

“After the fight in Sweden (McGregor’s UFC debut) I handed him a nice big wad of cash and it was a brilliant feeling for me. I never paid him any money in my life before that. 

“And I gave me ma’ a wad of cash. And me girlfriend, Dee, spoiling her. I never had anything to give her before, so I spoil her all the time now. I wouldn’t be where I am now without her.

“You know when you get a good feeling and you feel it through your whole body? I keep hold of those feelings. And that’s what spurs me to stay focused and not drift off into that other s**t. Injuries never fared well for me. Boredom. I’d slip back into old habits.

“This time is different. I’m out here, I have money, the UFC is supporting me. It’s different and I know I’ve changed. I’ve dedicated myself these past five years and things have changed for me.”

McGregor’s relationship with trainer Kavanagh bears comparison to the one between Mike Tyson and Cus D’Amato, extending past the boundaries of a coach and reaching into the paternal. There is a deep affection between the two but it’s not something they voice often. Post-fight in Boston was an exception.

“After the Boston fight he went missing. He was in the jacks having a moment to himself. He went away to think about things and about what we are doing here. My US debut and the big walk-in and all that,” McGregor reveals.

“It was a big moment for us. When he came back he looked a bit teary-eyed and I was like, ‘Jesus, this is special.’ We hugged. It’s a beautiful thing and that’s why I won’t let him down. I won’t let anyone down ever again.”

Among the people McGregor is doing proud is also himself. His self-belief is a fire that has burned brightly for as long as he can remember. When the UFC came calling unexpectedly he didn’t feel honored and surprised, he wondered what had taken them so long. He’s always known his path lay through the Octagon.

“I love proving people wrong. But more than that, I love proving people right,” he says, by now sipping a concoction of Captain Morgan rum and fresh orange that his Paleo Diet book recommends for an evening tipple. 

“People who have been right about me all along: me. I’ve been right about myself all along. John Kavanagh, he has been right about me all along. He always used to say, ‘We are going to change the face of this game.’ I always used to get told that.

“In the middle of the training sessions I used to shout, ‘We are world champions!’ – before you knew it I had two Cage Warriors belts at different weights. Cathal Pendred has one, Chris Fields had one – because we all believed in ourselves. I have really proved to myself what a strong mind can do: it can do anything. And that’s why I am going to be a UFC champion.”