I’ll admit it. I wasn’t sure that Conor McGregor could overcome the challenge of Chad Mendes.
He had to alter his gameplan on two weeks notice for one of the toughest guys in the UFC, a fighter with title fight experience, and was expected to deliver in front of thousands of Irish fans.
And when I saw the ease with which Mendes took McGregor down in the first round, I thought my doubts were validated because the wrestling questions were answered. He quite simply wasn’t able to stuff the deep shots of Mendes.
But one element of McGregor’s game that soon became abundantly clear and will likely become his best attribute if he is to go on to become the undisputed featherweight champion is his mental toughness.
Lesser fighters would have wilted when put on their back four times in nine minutes. They’d have panicked when a thunderous elbow connected with their nose.
But McGregor did anything but.
He maintained his trademark coolness and calmly regained half guard when Mendes was in side control. He composedly closed his full guard when Mendes got lazy in that position. And he rode that out before exploding in a scramble to get the fight to its feet.
That proves the kind of psychological toughness that can’t be taught and you’d think that McGregor will be an even heavier favourite when he meets Jose Aldo, which is pretty hard to argue with after that performance.
It also exhibits McGregor’s ability to overcome any unforeseen obstacle which is what the best fighters do. If he was able to weather the storm of Mendes’ wrestling and finish with a TKO, then you’d be led to believe that he could tough it through the leg kicks of Aldo.
He’s the kind of fighter that doesn’t give up and we didn’t know that for a fact before UFC 189 because he was never really put in the position where he would need to.
There were some holes in his game, sure, and his takedown defence needs some serious work but the fact of the matter is that he faced the best wrestler in the featherweight division and came through it so his grappling is hardly poor.
A lot of signs of his mental fortitude actually arose from events that came before he even walked to the octagon.
Let’s look at the situation that McGregor found himself in on Friday evening.
He had just undergone what looked like an arduous weight cut, having endured one of the most tempestuous few days in his life that involved travelling from Las Vegas to Connecticut to Los Angeles and back to Vegas, all the while trying to get in his training for the biggest fight of his life.
McGregor made it clear that the media obligations were wearing on him prior to the fight and, in his post-fight interview, he revealed that he was struggling with an injury more serious than the rib injury that forced Aldo out of the original fight (a knee injury from what we hear).
The obstacles were piled against the Dubliner and it was as if the MMA gods had conspired to make UFC 189 the most difficult test of his career and it turned out to be just that.
But he passed the test with flying colours, those colours being green, white and gold for the most part and showed the doubters that he has an indomitable will to succeed and sometimes that’s more significant than the ability to fight.
Luckily for McGregor, he can do both and Mendes learned that the hard way courtesy of a textbook one-two that sent the American crashing to the mat and The Notorious walking away with gold wrapped around his waist.
