Conor Mcgregor Friend Said He Will Not Fight Again
There'due south a story that Conor McGregor's childhood friend, Tom Egan, likes to tell, about dorsum when dreams were just dreams and McGregor was just a pimply-faced, clean-shaven xix-year-old.
The pair was hanging out at the mall in Dublin, Ireland. They grabbed some nutrient, then stopped at a bookstore to scan through the mixed martial arts magazines.
They were in the infancy of their MMA careers and hoped a few seconds spent gazing through the pages might confer on them some new skill. As they were leaving, McGregor spotted Floyd Mayweather on the comprehend of The Ring , ii fists up, a toothy grinning, his eyes gazing back, besides.
"Wow," McGregor said. "Expect at him. He is the confront of battle. He's on summit of the world."
Egan continued for the door. "C'mon," he chosen out. But it was futile. McGregor wouldn't budge. He was holding the magazine with both hands, transfixed.
"He was visualizing himself," McGregor'due south all-time friend says at present, "in that position—on the encompass."
After the first stop of a four-leg, effectually-the-earth, around-the-Twittersphere-and-back-again promotional tour, McGregor—the slightly more than grown-upward, pushing 30-year-quondam version—took time to reply a few questions in a corner of Staples Eye in Los Angeles. His light dark-brown hair parted neatly to the side, his beard delicately manicured, McGregor wore a navy adapt with two words stitched vertically over and over once more into makeshift pinstripes, pocket-sized enough for simply a squinting observer—or a camera—to make out: FUCK YOU.
With a mic in manus, McGregor is a supernova, an all-world shit-talker.
"On August 26," he began, referring to the date of his boxing debut against Mayweather, "this man will be unconscious. He's too small. He'south likewise frail."
Jeff Bottari/Zuffa LLC/Getty Images
Floyd Mayweather Sr., the male parent and trainer of Floyd Jr., was just to the Irishman's left. He stared down at McGregor, then interjected. "You're gonna get killed," he yelled.
McGregor laughed it off. Then Mayweather Sr. asked him the question many people take wondered about since this fight was announced before a summertime of bluster began.
"How the fuck you going to outbox him?" he asked, referring to his son. He pointed his finger at McGregor and added, with this fight's trademark over-the-peak shade: "All the same fighters he beat would trounce your ass."
Information technology's a sentiment shared by Oscar De La Hoya, a former battle champion turned successful promoter, who chosen Mayweather-McGregor a " farce " in a Facebook mail service. Former Canadian cruiserweight Troy Ross agrees.
"McGregor has never had a boxing lucifer in his life," he says. "How can he be in a ring with Floyd?"
Fans, however, want to believe the impossible. They want to believe the MMA fighter with an anesthetizing left hook—a man who calls himself Notorious and is notoriously just seven years removed from a task as a plumber's assistant and a monthly welfare check—can knock off arguably the greatest pound-for-pound boxer of any era. It is this conventionalities in which Conor McGregor traffics—turning skepticism into certainty.
It'southward the Mystic Mac effect. He predicted he'd be the best MMA fighter in Europe, then he said he'd vanquish the unbeatable Jose Aldo. Then he said he'd win two UFC title belts. All came true.
In the weeks leading up to adjacent Sabbatum's bout in Vegas, fans have lined up to place their bets on McGregor. One sportsbook recorded 15 bets for McGregor to win for every wager for Mayweather. Indeed, many come across McGregor's crossover equally niggling more than a money catch, a potential nine-figure payday for both fighters and untold millions for the UFC and various boxing federations. Pundits, not to mention tweeters and everyday sports fans, accept called the fight a disgrace and a race-baiting spectacle .
But inside the ring, when the two men stare into each other's eyes and the fight begins, there is something more elemental. For Mayweather, information technology's unproblematic: Have out the Irish enigma and his battle legacy is complete—a 50-0 record to get the winningest undefeated champion in sports history.
For McGregor, the point of indulging in this—the shitshow superfight of the century—is more complicated: He'due south fighting for Ireland, but head to the streets of Dublin these days, and yous'll find the Irish appalled by his behavior, calling him a phony. He boasts of winning more than titles, but talk to his friends and fellow fighters about a decade of sleepless nights and proclamations on individual jets, and information technology seems like Mystic Mac wants something unattainable—something peradventure more permanent, something only he can come across.
MAC'Southward FIRST FIGHT: HE'Due south Late—NOWHERE TO Be Constitute!—UNTIL…Pow! (Nicole Rifkin for B/R Mag)
McGregor's first professional person mixed martial arts fight took place in a tiny basketball gym in Dublin. He was deep down on the undercard, an unknown so unknown that an hour before the bell was supposed to ring, nobody noticed he hadn't shown upwardly. Thirty minutes later, his coach, John Kavanagh, realized his prodigy was missing. He called McGregor's phone, but it was turned off. Twenty minutes until fight time, still nothing. Finally, every bit everyone was preparing for a forfeit and the next card, McGregor burst through the door.
"He jumped straight into the band," says Owen Roddy, McGregor'southward striking bus. "Bounced around, croaky his homo a few times, knocked him out, then bounced out of the ring." And so he had a few pints for good measure.
McGregor's origin story is well-known. It'due south part of his allure. The Irish lad from the Southwest Dublin working class neighborhood gets bullied in school, joins a boxing gym to learn how to fight off his attackers. As the story goes, he comes from nothing and works his way to the top.
It's a neat and tidy tale, but when he was 16, McGregor's parents moved him and his ii sisters to a large firm in Lucan, a leafy village 20 miles from the Dublin city center. On his first solar day of school, Tom Egan introduced himself. On the surface, they were opposites—Egan the loner with meticulous discipline, McGregor outgoing but entirely unreliable, often spending hours in his own head.
"He was only a lazy prick, and I don't mean that in an insulting way," Egan says of McGregor. "He was only at a loss of identity, and he didn't really take anything to concord onto."
On weekends, McGregor would stop by Egan'due south parents' house and they'd watch delayed recordings of UFC fights, then mimic the moves in the back shed. During the week, McGregor trained at his babyhood boxing club in Dublin, or occasionally an MMA gym nigh his home with Egan. Information technology was there that Kavanagh, the "Godfather of Irish MMA," noticed both McGregor'due south and Egan'southward raw talent. They became his prized pupils at the new Direct Blast Gym Ireland in downtown Dublin.
McGregor arrived adamant to fight anyone. He wanted to testify himself, sure, but he was seemingly battling against his own angst.
Once, earlier he had a driver's license, he persuaded Egan to let him take the wheel of Egan's parents' auto. He drove in perfect circles effectually an industrial park. He flashed his blinker at the optimal time and turned with precision. As long equally he was in motion, he was in command. When it came time to park, McGregor hit the gas and made a beeline toward the spot. The car crashed into the wall and smoke billowed into the sky. He had forgotten to hit the brakes.
For cursory stretches, Kavanagh managed to reel in McGregor'southward unpredictability. He placed him on the undercard for a small-fourth dimension result, Cage of Truth 3, that Kavanagh was hosting on June 28, 2008. Information technology was McGregor'due south third professional fight. At the weigh-in the day before, McGregor stared downwards his opponent, Artemij Sitenkov, and proceeded to announce he'd knock him out in the first round. Then McGregor turned and yelled at Sitenkov's motorbus, "Yous tin can get it likewise, sometime man!"
This wasn't operation art. There was no one in the audience.
MAC'S FIRST LOSS…TAKES 69 SECONDS. AND So: A Lonely ESCAPE! (Nicole Rifkin for B/R Magazine)
The side by side day at the fight, McGregor had his ain cheering section, and his family came to see him fight for the first time. But Sitenkov took him right to the ground, submitted McGregor in just 69 seconds for his first loss. The few dozen people in the gym vicious nearly silent, and McGregor leaped out of the Octagon and disappeared downwardly the hallway ashamed.
The post-obit Monday, he didn't show up for training. He missed the next day, and the day afterward that besides. Instead, McGregor buried himself on his parents' couch. Egan reached out, but McGregor'south mate was absorbed in his own career, destroying opponents in the 175-pound division on the Irish MMA circuit.
Eventually, Kavanagh convinced McGregor to come dorsum to the gym, and he won his next fight by TKO. Only there was no epiphany, and shortly he was back on his parents' burrow. The 69-second fight he'd promised to win had slapped him with such force that inertia set in. McGregor didn't fight for another 22 months.
Meanwhile, Egan signed on to fight the undercard in June 2009's UFC 93 in Dublin. It was a seminal moment in Ireland, as Egan became the starting time Irish-born fighter to compete in the big leagues of MMA. McGregor, sitting a few rows back from the muzzle, saw the kind of champion he wanted to be: an Irishman, within the Octagon, in the UFC.
In that location'south a tale about the great Celtic warrior Cu Chulainn, perhaps the most famous of all the Irish myths. Information technology starts with a boy raised in a small boondocks and the children who effort to bully him. He learns to fight back with such rage that he quickly transforms himself into the most strong fighter in the land.
He is as well a braggart, a flashy warrior in search of everlasting fame. He lives on a knife'due south edge and makes as many enemies equally friends. But, as with whatever mythological tale, Cu Chulainn (pronounced Kook-hullen ) knows that 1 mean solar day in that location will be a reckoning. It will either be a spectacular victory or a fail of epic proportions.
In 2009, as the ascension of McGregor began, his country's economic system was crumbling. Then Kavanagh gave McGregor a job pedagogy boxing at the SBG gym to help supplement his unemployment check, and McGregor resumed regular training with an eclectic group of fighters.
"We turned upwards every day to John'due south Identify," says Paddy Holohan, one of the fighters. "We were but in this shed, airtight off to the earth."
In tiny gyms around Ireland, McGregor reeled off eight straight wins, after starting his career 4-ii. With each victory, he became more arrogant and defiant. Even as far back every bit 2011, he was lambasting other fighters on Irish bulletin boards. In ane post, under the username NOTORIOUS, he wrote :
"vote for me for fighter of the year how can yous not … cleaved orbital bones, broken jaws, broken noses, fighters retired … EVERY Single ONE OF THEM ARE RUNNING SCARED EVERY SINGLE I!!!!!"
He defended his Cage Warrior title, and the UFC signed him to a five-fight contract. In April 2013, on his way to the airdrome for the get-go one, in Stockholm, Sweden, McGregor cashed his last unemployment bank check. After TKO-ing the journeyman Marcus Brimage in the first round that Saturday, he earned $16,000 for the victory and another $sixty,000 for the "knockout of the night."
While the younger generation in Ireland was celebrating 1 of its own, old-school fight-watchers found Mystic Mac's personality grating.
"He has utterly divided Irish society, not along socio-economical grounds, but past historic period," says Sean McGoldrick of the Dominicus World , a newspaper in Ireland. "Nosotros like our sports stars to exist humble."
Conor McGregor fans cheer during the UFC 189 Earth Championship Fan Event on March 31, 2015 in Dublin, Ireland. (Getty Images)
If you lot walk the streets of Dublin, even three weeks before the Mayweather fight, you'll run into plenty of McGregor fans. But many others feel he's negatively affected the perception of the land.
Sitting inside a French restaurant on Fade Street, in a tightly tailored adjust, Sean, a salesman in his early 40s, says McGregor "is playing what people think an Irishman is—information technology's non very Irish at all."
Downwards the road at Jo'Burger, conversation turns to McGregor, and one of the waiters jumps in unprompted: "He doesn't represent u.s. in the all-time way."
The waiter pauses and lets out a smile. "I still want him to win."
The beard grew, and the tattoos followed. McGregor had started to create the fighter he imagined himself to be. For his second UFC fight, in the summer of 2013 in Boston, he chosen Egan and asked him to piece of work in his corner.
The old friends had exchanged a few emails but hadn't seen each other in years. After Egan'south loss in UFC 93, he moved across the Atlantic seeking a new challenge, simply found it difficult to break through. When he reconnected with McGregor, he saw a "completely different private."
McGregor was grooming alongside Gunnar Nelson, an Icelandic fighter who helped teach him to channel his emotions within the Octagon. He was also honing Mystic Mac's fighting IQ. McGregor "has this astonishing ability," says Roddy, his striking coach. "You could bring in a guy brand-new—he'southward never seen him—and within a minute, he has him worked out and has his patterns read."
The about important shift, however, came when McGregor's sister handed him a copy of Rhonda Byrne'southward self-assistance book, The Secret . The bestseller details a version of the law of allure in which your thoughts manifest your desires. He read passages from the book out loud, so passed it around the gym.
Conor McGregor celebrates following his win against Max Holloway in their featherweight tour at TD Garden on August 17, 2013 in Boston, Massachusetts. (Getty Images)
"Conor was the one that wanted to exist the best," says Holohan, who kept grooming alongside McGregor long afterward the unemployment checks gave manner to millions. If McGregor wanted Ferraris and 5-digit spending sprees, they happened. If he wanted to win belts, well then, through his emboldened conventionalities system that, also, would happen—miracle of miracles.
McGregor stopped ruminating and spread the enthusiasm to those closest to him.
"He gets me then motivated," says Artem Lobov, a teammate at SBG. "I could be going into the store to buy a sausage roll and I feel similar I'yard fighting for the world title."
In Boston, McGregor won at UFC Fight Night past conclusion. He also tore his ACL in the get-go round, which forced him out for the next xi months. That winter, he holed up in a firm in Reykjavik, Iceland, with some of the SBG gang. The sunday was only shining five hours a day, night turning into more night, but McGregor rarely slept.
Holohan, his roommate in the Nordic mansion before there was Mac Mansion in Las Vegas, remembers waking upwards at four a.g. to discover McGregor watching fights on his iPad. And then he sat up and talked through the intricacies of the fighters on the screen. But McGregor always talks—and inevitably, the conversation would turn to Mayweather. They imagined stepping into the ring against Money, who had just taken a $41.5 million purse for defeating Canelo Alvarez past decision in 12 rounds, and just how "easy it would be for an MMA fighter," Holohan says, to beat his ass.
When you compare it to MMA, the two friends agreed, "boxing is very, very like shooting fish in a barrel.''
MAC SEES THE FUTURE…MID-AIR: "I Want TO BOX. I WANT MAYWEATHER." (Nicole Rifkin for B/R Mag)
Over time, thoughts of taking on Mayweather began to crystallize. In the jump of 2015, McGregor was on a 10-city promotional tour for his upcoming fight confronting Jose Aldo. McGregor and his squad jetted beyond three continents on a UFC-chartered aeroplane. Halfway through the bout, most of Camp Conor returned to Ireland, leaving only McGregor and Lobov onboard. The days composite together, but at one point, Lobov remembers, they were seated next to each other, 40,000 feet higher up footing.
McGregor leaned in: "I want to box," he told his friend on the jet. "I want Mayweather."
He went on to beat Chad Mendes when Aldo pulled out, then beat Aldo anyway five months subsequently, winning the UFC featherweight title. He jumped up a division to lightweight and lost for the beginning time in 15 fights, this time to Nate Diaz. After the fight, he told commentator Joe Rogan: "I'one thousand humbled in victory or defeat. I respect Nate."
MAC ON TRACK: HE'S Back—AND "THE ILLUSION OF INSANITY IS OVER" (Nicole Rifkin for B/R Mag)
It is that kind of humility—notwithstanding forced—that the older Irish generation wants then badly from its stars, that for the first time—however briefly—united his domicile country backside him. For McGregor, admiration was no consolation. His visions of grandeur were now looking garish.
During the weigh-in for his rematch with Diaz a year ago at UFC 202, McGregor strode up to the scale in a blue tank pinnacle, his mouth almost frothing. He took off his superlative, stood on the scale, flexed his muscles and screamed at the crowd.
When Diaz approached the scale, McGregor stood next to Kavanagh, his coach, and—according to MMA journalist Ariel Helwani—whispered in his ear: "The illusion of insanity is over. Now back to the game plan."
Of form, McGregor won the fight against Diaz and, in Nov, won at UFC 205 against Eddie Alvarez, too. They were formalities, really. The countdown to the Mayweather fight had started years ago.
By the time their cross-country trollfest had reached Brooklyn i afternoon concluding month, McGregor taunted Mayweather with racist comments, repeatedly telling Mayweather, " dance for me, boy." He also told the crowd of more than than thirteen,000 at Barclays Eye that he was " half-black from the belly downward."
Two hours later, McGregor was forced to respond to his own responses on an L-shaped runway. He wore a long fur coat with no shirt and patterned pants. Belongings a h2o bottle in his right hand, twisting it nervously between his fingers, he shifted in place. "I'chiliad a big fan of the culture," he said, when asked almost his comments about African-Americans. But it did footling to quell the outrage. More pointed questions came, centered effectually the point of this shitshow in the kickoff place: Did McGregor deserve to be fighting this fight? Was he given something he hadn't earned?
MAC VS. MAYWEATHER: "HE IS GOING TO DOMINATE—100 PERCENT. BELIEVE Information technology." (Nicole Rifkin for B/R Mag)
A few feet away from the uncomfortable interview, McGregor's pocket-sized team from dorsum in the Dublin gym remained undaunted. Lobov, with the same energy that McGregor displays from weigh-ins to private planes, exclaimed that his friend is "better than Mayweather. He is going to dominate him, 100 percent. Believe information technology."
Belief, however, tin can become intoxicating. It can brand you believe in your ain myth.
Toward the end of the tale of Cu Chulainn, the fighter'south hubris has pushed him to the brink. A life's worth of enemies begins to conspire against him. They forcefulness the war hero to consume a plate total of dog meat and so pierce him, one by ane, with magical spears. Before the final blow can achieve him, the legend decides to tie himself to a tree and face his killers head-on.
The great Celtic warrior, information technology turns out, is not immortal. He dies continuing up.
Flinder Boyd is a writer-at-large for B/R Mag. A former writer at FoxSports.com, his piece of work has appeared in Rolling Rock, Newsweek, BBC Online and more, besides as multiple editions of The Best American Sports Writing. Before becoming a journalist, he played 10 seasons of professional basketball across Europe, and at present lives in Los Angeles. Follow him on Twitter: @flinderboyd.
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Source: https://bleacherreport.com/articles/2727681-conor-mcgregor-stories-dublin-friends-coaches