We know we write a lot about Conor McGregor!
We’re well aware of that fact. But can you really blame anyone for being in awe?
He’s the most popular sportsperson in Ireland, he’s the biggest superstar in all of combat sports right now and he’s at the very zenith of his powers.
Mixed martial arts careers don’t typically last very long so we shouldn’t be grumbling about his omnipresence in the headlines. We should be enjoying him while we have him because all it takes is one injury and he’s gone for good.
I should preface this by saying that I haven’t always been gulping at the McGregor Kool-Aid. I thought he’d struggle against Dustin Poirier and I believed that Chad Mendes would give him the toughest fight of his career. Hell, I even went on camera to throw my backing behind Jose Aldo back in December.
Since he unified the UFC featherweight title last year, I took a step back and looked at what McGregor had done since his last loss.
The Crumlin native is currently riding a 15 fight winning streak and in his last nine bouts, he’s claimed four championship belts across two weight divisions (including the UFC interim featherweight title).
And with a victory over his next opponent, UFC lightweight champion Rafael dos Anjos, it would be hard to repress the discussion of McGregor in the same breath as Anderson Silva, Jon Jones and Georges St-Pierre in the conversation of “who is the greatest mixed martial artist of all time?”
Many would argue that that would be jumping the gun, and the shark, as McGregor has been in the UFC less than three years and has yet to see his 28th birthday.
But I disagree. Let’s look at the criteria necessary to be considered an all-time great.
The fighter must first have the skills necessary to compete at the highest level and there is no arguing that Conor McGregor is one of the most talented strikers ever to walk through the octagon doors.
Not only is he a supremely technical kickboxer but he’s also the owner of some unprecedented power for a 145 lber and his knockout percentage of 89% speaks for itself.
To be spoken of among the likes of an Anderson Silva, one must also dominate their weight division. The argument could be made that, in three short years, McGregor has cleaned out the featherweight division. All he needs to do is to cross Frankie Edgar off (and he’s by no means an easy fighter to cross off) and the 145 lb division will have become something akin to Silva’s dominance of the middleweight division between 2006 and 2012.
It’s not just the in-cage prowess of fighters that makes one an all-time great because the true legends of the sport have all shared an air of enigmatic magic outside of competition too.
Fedor Emelianenko, Chuck Liddell, BJ Penn all had that inexplicable magnetism about them which is why they are always in the top ten G.O.A.T lists of fight fans.
And McGregor has it too, in abundance! The way that he predicts the way that his fights will end and delivers time and time again when he gets into the octagon has made him must-watch.
But the primary deciding factor in becoming a G.O.A.T is that you must do something that is truly groundbreaking.
A 23-year-old Jones became the youngest UFC champion of all time when he finished ‘Shogun’ Rua. Silva owns the record for most consecutive title defences at 10. GSP has the most wins in title bouts at 12. Randy Couture became the first man to hold a belt in two separate weight divisions.
But McGregor can trump Couture’s triumph with victory on March 5th as he will become the first man to simultaneously hold titles in different weight classes.
And if the plans of ‘The Notorious’ come to fruition then his already stellar legacy will continue to happily fatten. He wants to bounce between featherweight title defence and lightweight title defence if he claims the 155 lb throne in six weeks’ time.
That is genuinely unprecedented. Away from all the gate figures and PPV buys, there’s nothing to suggest that McGregor can’t go on to dominate both the 145 lb and 155 lb divisions at the same time.
I’m not even going to broach the subject of his hint at moving to welterweight!
He’s changed the game. It’s the McGregor show now and it makes for compulsive viewing.
Let me make it clear that I’m not claiming he will immediately leapfrog the above names to the number one spot of greatest of all time. I’m merely stating that he will be in the conversation, in the bunch, with a win over dos Anjos.
Of course he needs to defend his title successfully in order to be even mentioned among these names but all I’m saying is that a victory on March 5th STARTS that conversation!
There is something about the Irish mentality that makes us think that we’re not truly worthy of being the best at anything, especially in mainstream professional sport.
The multiple failures of the national football team and the ‘so close yet so far’ element of the national rugby team has left many wondering if our time will ever come.
But it has come. We have an undisputed world champion who could make history in his sport with just one more win.
And, for my money, that would be pretty damn great.
