For a long time there was a sense the so-called “fun fight” was extinct, that rankings and network television deals and the very seriousness of it all would forever get in the way of seeing two folks punch each other senseless for our mindless Saturday-night thrills.
Sure, sometimes the UFC would throw fans a bone. Bellator worked hard to bring them back until phantom groin shots, failed drug tests and two literal deaths seemed to make them rethink things some. But generally, the fun fight—the fights where two people with a name fought for as big a purse as they could lock down, stakes, titles and reputations be damned—was largely lost.
Then UFC 196 happened, and the whole dam burst with an enthusiasm nobody saw coming.
You know the story by now: Conor McGregor lost his opponent two weeks out from headlining the event, Nate Diaz took the fight and proceeded to choke McGregor right off his perch as the sport’s most unbeatable man. It made Diaz a household name and McGregor a man obsessed with redemption, which of course meant a rematch was in the offing.
This weekend that rematch happens, a running back of the funnest of fun fights, one built on a weird vitriol that balances competitive spirit and salesmanship, respect but not quite appreciation, desire to get paid and desire to prove the first time was no fluke.
Yes, UFC 202 is destined to be fun, stakes, titles and reputation be damned.
But what of McGregor, the warrior Irishman who took the sport by storm from the day he hit the UFC, blustering and blitzing featherweights from the unknown to the greatest ever on his way to becoming king?
What of him, who saw his invincibility proved fallacious, who saw his record blemished relatively effortlessly by a beloved figure who was drunk in Cabo instead of training to shock the world when he got the call to fight?
What does another loss mean to him?
Actually not that much.
That will surely be a tough pill to swallow for those who despise him. It may even come as a surprise to those who ride with him and are worried their lad will be forever marred by the Diaz stain should he fail again. But it remains a fact.
This rematch is essentially a pointless, worthless endeavor beyond the realm of fun and money. It will be fun to watch and it will make money, but nothing else about it is even remotely relevant. If there are those out there who are enthusiastically waiting for McGregor to be chased from stardom forever by a loss, they’re fixing to be disappointed. If there are those anxiously awaiting a raised McGregor hand through tented fingers, they’re invested a little too deeply too.
If McGregor walks across the cage when the bell rings and gets blasted cold in a dozen seconds (something he’s not totally unfamiliar with, given how he earned his featherweight title), it changes nothing about his reign at 145 pounds. He’s the best in the world at that weight and has the stack of bodies to prove it. He doesn’t just win at that weight, he demolishes guys—good guys.
Losing at welterweight again is totally irrelevant to that and to anything else, save for perhaps his chances at a welterweight title run that was never in the cards to begin with. It simply means he couldn’t beat one guy at one weight in a pointless rematch of a fun fight that came out of nowhere in the first place.
Suddenly that outcome doesn’t seem so bad, does it?
What you’ll see on Saturday night is the best featherweight alive taking on a very good lightweight at the welterweight limit. It’s craziness. It’s chaos. It’s fun. It doesn’t mean anything more than that for the competitors, and it shouldn’t mean any more than that to anyone else.
A UFC 202 loss is a harmless harm for Conor McGregor. You’re free to enjoy that reality as much as he does.
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