Leading up to UFC Fight Night 59: McGregor vs. Whoever, the UFC is going full speed ahead on the Conor McGregor hype-train. (Count the number of times that Dennis Siver appears in this “McGregor Era” promo. Zero. The answer is zero.) And in all of their promotion, McGregor is made out to be a phenom, an uncrowned king, one of the biggest stars in the world — potentially, at least.
But this UFC Ultimate Insider segment on McGregor uses a different tactic: Presenting McGregor as a real human being. He has a sister who he used to scrap with as a child, and parents who were worried about their son giving up a stable life as a plumber to pursue cage-fighting. His mom maybe still doesn’t know what MMA is. (“Da boxin’ kind of gave him a complete different outlook,” she says.) At the 1:54 mark, Conor’s father Tony describes one of his son’s early fights against “an Eastern European guy…ex-Special Forces from Russia.” Tony can barely get through the story before he gets choked up. “That was a defining moment for me,” Tony says. “Boy become man.”
It’s a powerful moment, and it makes McGregor so much more relatable than all of his usual bluster. I also enjoyed this charming — and so utterly Irish — monologue that McGregor makes on the topic of money:
“You ever hear the saying, ‘It’s hard to get up and run when you’re wearing silk underwear’? As if to say, like, I made some money, it’s hard to actually get up and motivate. But I’ve got a foolproof plan: When you get your money, spend every penny of it. Blow it all, until you’re actually broke come the next fight. So you’re just as hungry as you were before the first one. So I’m in the process of blowing every penny of that. Every f*ckin’ penny of it, yeah?”
Then, he goes suit shopping. Please, somebody make me a Vine of 5:44-5:46. Thanks.