It was a good death as those things go, a warrior crossing through the last door with dignity, the same fury, instinct and lightning speed that made him a champion ending his reign in turn.
In just 13 short seconds, the only featherweight champion the UFC had ever known, Jose Aldo, walloped his loud-mouthed opponent, Conor McGregor, with a thunderous punch, made him bleed and earned his respect.
It wasn’t nearly enough.
That he ended up on the mat, eyes wide and confused, unable to believe that he had met defeat for the first time in a decade, is a testament to glory.
In a sport of inches and seconds, McGregor operates in fractions. That’s the difference between one man covering his face in shame, his friends crushed cageside by the sight, and another waving the orange, green and white flag of Ireland in front of an adoring crowd.
All fighters—whether they know it or not—are living computers, calculating speed, force and distance in real time. The athlete who comes closest to arriving at the correct answer tends to walk away victorious.
And no one has a faster processor than McGregor.
“Conor said he was in the moment, calm and ready to go,” Fox Sports analyst Brian Stann said after the fight. “Jose looked tense and looked like he had a lot of nervous energy. These fighters are all close in athletic ability. The main difference is mental. Mental strength is his biggest attribute.”
There was no ponderous feeling-out process. That work had been done in the months leading up to the fight, the two men pushing each other mentally in a worldwide press tour that created unprecedented interest. There was no need for pretense here. These men had enveloped each other already.
There was nothing left but violence, intimate and wonderful.
Instead of the slow circling and languid prowl of jungle cats, there was only lighting and thunder, an energy that roared and howled. Thoughtful moments of introspection were replaced by carefully honed instinct.
In the end, all fights devolve into chaos, and the man who strikes first also tends to be the man who strikes last.
In the instant it takes to count to one, Aldo feinted with a right hand, the punch a mere disguise to hide a obscene left hand that was coming behind it. For the champion, it was a common sequence—one McGregor had sniffed out in training, per Yahoo Sports’ Dan Wetzel. In mid-feint, his response was already in flight, a lethal left cross.
By the time Aldo’s left hand snapped McGregor’s head back, the champion was unconscious, his limp body on its way to the mat.
In the UFC Octagon at least, life comes at you fast. Aldo had posed a question with his left hook. It turns out McGregor, the man many had dismissed as mere marketing hokum, had the answer.
“I saw the fight in my mind so many times,” McGregor told Fox Sports after the fight. “I had an answer for every sequence. It only takes one shot.”
After the bout, the new champion openly speculated about reigning over two divisions at once, headlining in front of 80,000 of his countrymen in Ireland’s Croke Park and securing a more equitable share of the mighty profits he generates from the notoriously tight-fisted Fertitta brothers who own the UFC.
In the era before Conor, all of the above would have been laughable. But in the press conference after the fight, there wasn’t a snicker to be heard. The paradigm has shifted and a new hero has emerged, banner waving in the wind of his own devising.
Conor McGregor has arrived, and anything is possible.
Jonathan Snowden covers combat sports for Bleacher Report.
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