For as long as Conor McGregor has made noise—which is to say, as long as he’s been in the UFC—he has drawn critics. Those who said he’s all talk, those who said his wins were hollow, those who said he’s paved his own soft road.
Some of this kind of backlash is inevitable in the midst of a quick rise. There are always non-believers, doubters, and yes, haters.
Success, after all, is its own kind of magnet.
They can quiet down now, the whole lot of them, after McGregor accomplished something previously though impossible, something that has never been done in the 23-year history of the UFC. In knocking out Eddie Alvarez, he became the first fighter ever to simultaneously hold two UFC championships, adding the lightweight belt to his featherweight title.
Gold, gold, everywhere.
“They’re not on my level,” McGregor (21-3) said in the aftermath. “You gotta have some attributes. If you’re not an equal to me, I’m gonna rip your head off. Eddie’s a warrior but he shouldn’t have been in here with me.”
That’s obvious now, after McGregor captured yet another night of headlines while main eventing the UFC’s first foray into New York since 1995.
While the pay-per-view results will come in time, the early returns show record crowds for McGregor, whose presence drew $17.7 million in money to Madison Square Garden, according to UFC president Dana White, who revealed the number in the post-fight press conference. That number shattered the UFC box office record of just over $12 million, set at UFC 129 at Toronto’s massive Rogers Centre.
Under that kind of pressure, before both cynics and fanatics, McGregor reached greatness. On merit alone, no one can match what he just did.
Question his opponents or the matchups, but when the stakes were highest, McGregor stepped up, competed, succeeded. With the world watching, he shrugged, relaxed and fired out his left until Alvarez could no longer stand up to it.
It was a thing of beauty, both awing and confusing in its accuracy.
For McGregor, it was a shockingly quick, if unsurprising result. He’d walked into the Octagon at Madison Square Garden favored, but dispatched his opponent in stunning style. While Alvarez had been finished before, it had been five years since he’d been stopped on strikes, and he’d never been dominated as he was by McGregor, who battered him throughout before finishing him 3:04 into round two.
The Irishman was poised and patient, capitalizing on his reach advantage to stay out of his opponent’s range while landing his own pinpoint strikes from the outside. In less than two full rounds, he knocked Alvarez down multiple times and finally finished him with a four-piece combination that saw all of those strikes land.
If it wasn’t death by 1,000 cuts, it was still surgical, precise, exacting. Alvarez, it seems, never really had a chance. He never got quite untracked, losing the striking battle 32-9, according to FightMetric.
“Conor is special,” said UFC president Dana White. “He throws that left hand with no effort, but once he lands it, they go.”
Remember, prior to the fight, Alvarez had said McGregor was the easiest fight in the lightweight division. So much for that theory.
Only once had the the attempt to simultaneously win multiple titles been made, at UFC 94, when lightweight champ B.J. Penn moved up in weight to fight welterweight kingpin Georges St-Pierre. That fight was as one-sided as last night’s except it was in favor of the champion. St-Pierre took Penn down repeatedly and after four rounds, Penn had enough and his team declined to let him answer the bell.
This was almost the exact opposite, the man that was in theory the smaller of the two dominating the bigger one practically from start to finish.
It not only confirms the greatness of McGregor but sets him up for whatever the biggest money fights may be. Essentially, the UFC is his, and he can move forward in any direction he wants. He can return to 145 and fight Jose Aldo. He can stay at 155 and take his pick of Tony Ferguson or Khabib Nurmagomedov, who also won at UFC 205. He can take time off and see how things shake out without him. Given his current standing, he can move up to 170 pounds and fight current champ Tyron Woodley. He can fight Nate Diaz again at any weight they agree upon.
It may sound crazy, but truly, every road leads back to McGregor. That’s what happens when you’re in the position he’s in, not just a champion but the very best in the sport.
The critics may still be around, but they have much less ammunition than they used to. No matter the situation, no matter the opponent, he has won. He has beaten wrestlers, strikers, grapplers. He has put himself into the highest pressure situations and squeezed out diamonds.
Read more MMA news on BleacherReport.com