Thirty-six F-Bombs in 30 minutes, a peak viewership of 360,000 and that was just in the pre-fight press conference.
After Rafael dos Anjos was forced out of the main event of UFC 196 with a fractured foot, the UFC was left with just 11 days to find an opponent for Conor McGregor, set up a new fight and promote it to get rid of those last few tickets for the MGM Grand Garden Arena.
They arrived at Nate Diaz, a veteran of the game who has seen and done it all. He’s won The Ultimate Fighter, he’s competed in two weight divisions and even fought for the UFC lightweight title in 2012.
Diaz made his UFC debut in 2007 when he defeated Manny Gamburyan to become the TUF 5 lightweight champion whereas McGregor didn’t make his first UFC appearance until 2013.
Since then McGregor, due in no small part to his tendency to get his work done early in the octagon, has spent relatively little time inside the eight fenced walls.
His 13-second knockout of Jose Aldo in December pushed his octagon time to just 2,342 seconds in the octagon.
Diaz, comparatively, has spent almost six times that amount of time on the mat with a total UFC fight time of 13,815 seconds which translates to almost four hours of action.
The Stockton native has exactly three times as many UFC bouts as his Irish counterpart, 21 to McGregor’s 7, and his average fight time is significantly longer than that of ‘The Notorious.’
Conor McGregor enjoys the joint-tenth shortest average fight time in the octagon for fighters with a minimum of five bouts under the promotional banner.
McGregor’s fights last an average of 5:34 and that mean was driven up substantially by his bout with Max Holloway, the only time that ‘The Notorious’ has been the distance in his career.
Diaz’s bouts last almost twice as long as McGregor’s with an average fight time of 11:01 which is easy to understand considering he’s gone the distance in 10 of his 21 octagon outings.
While Diaz owns a hefty advantage in terms of octagon experience, McGregor had much more experience outside of the UFC as 14 of his 21 bouts came before he was awarded his shot on the biggest stage for mixed martial arts.
Diaz, meanwhile, fought just seven times before he made his UFC debut so he’s spent most of his career with the world’s largest MMA promotion.
In terms of finishing rates for their whole MMA careers, McGregor unsurprisingly comes out on top as he’s had a near perfect history of stopping his opponents in his victories, with Holloway the only one of 19 to make it to the judges.
Diaz has a slightly worse off finishing rate, stopping 15 of the 18 men he’s beaten within the distance,
There is also a disparity between how each man likes to finish his fights.
McGregor, and his notorious left hand, have forced an early end to proceedings by knockout on 17 occasions with just the one victory by submission.
Diaz, on the other hand, is much more fond of getting the tap from his opponents and has taken 11 of his victories by submission.
One of the greatest assets that McGregor had at featherweight was his almost matchless height and reach advantage. ‘The Notorious’ is a huge 145 lber but he comes up against the longest opponent in his UFC career in Nate Diaz.
Diaz is 6 foot tall and will enjoy a two inch reach advantage over the Irishman which is a problem that will be fascinating to watch the Dubliner try to solve.
Both men are extremely active fighters on the feet. They throw at an incredible clip. But who is the more accurate striker?
We’ve taken a look at both men’s UFC careers and this is the result we’ve arrived at.
McGregor is the slightly more precise fighter, with 45% of his 483 significant strikes finding their target.
And while Diaz throws more on average, he is less accurate on the feet with 42% of his 2,285 strikes finding a home.
Neither guy is a one trick pony in terms of the targets of their strikes. They like to mix things up and this is how they match up in terms of accuracy of where their significant strikes land and how often they target that area.
As you can see from the above graphic, McGregor has targeted the head with almost three-quarters of the significant strikes he’s landed in the octagon whereas his opponents’ legs have been his most successful in terms of the percentage with which he connects.
Diaz has a very similar rate in terms of the targets of his significant strikes landed but what is worth noting is that, where McGregor trumps the American in terms of accuracy to the head, Diaz is much more precise with his significant strikes to the body and legs.
Ahead of fight night, most would give the grappling advantage to Nate Diaz just due to the fact that the majority of his victories have come by way of submission while both of McGregor’s career defeats have come by tapout.
Diaz holds a black belt under Cesar Gracie so will almost certainly be dangerous if the bout makes its way to the floor but one big question hanging over the clash is whether or not Diaz will be able to get McGregor down.
We’ve taken a look at the takedown and takedown defensive proficiency of both fighters to get a sense of how likely that will be to take place.
Conor McGregor, in fact, is actually more successful when it comes to takedowns, both offensively and defensively.
Judging by the above stats, the Irishman should be able to hold off any attempts from Diaz to take the fight to the mat.
But if he does manage to drag the fight to the mat, how active are both guys in their transitions?
We’ve taken a look at each guy’s UFC history of submission attempts, passes and position reversals and here’s what it looks like.
McGregor has never really been forced to work much on the ground. He forced his bout with Max Holloway into a grappling encounter due to an injured knee and he spent some time working off of his back against Chad Mendes but ‘The Notorious’ has never even looked for a submission in the octagon.
Diaz meanwhile is much more active in the grappling realm, having attempted more than one submission per fight (on average).
So there we have it, consider the numbers crunched.
