Things didn’t go Dennis Siver’s way on Sunday night in Boston. The long-time UFC veteran dropped a second-round stoppage loss to Conor McGregor in the main event of UFC Fight Night 59 at the TD Garden. McGregor stopped Siver at 1:54 of the second round with strikes in a bout that was entirely lopsided in favor of the Irish featherweight.
Still, much is made of McGregor’s capacity to talk or promote a fight. But what of his actual fighting ability? He’s talented, but was there anything about his performance that even Siver was forced to admit was more high level than he anticipated?
As it turns out, yes, there was.
“The one thing Conor does really well is talk,” Siver joked via translator at the event’s post-fight press conference, “but he also proved tonight he can do more than talk. He can fight. He was actually better than me tonight. He was not just average. He was better than me.”
While that’s general praise, Siver said McGregor took him by surprise not so much with his striking shot selection, but just how accurate he was in terms of being able to measure distance on the fly.
“One thing that’s really good about his style, he has a very good eye for distances,” Siver confessed. “He could judge distance very well.”
One reporter noted Siver had issues getting close enough to McGregor to secure takedown attempts. When asked what advice he’d give McGregor’s future opponents, Siver was as candid as he was dumbfounded by the entire experience.
“It’s a pretty good question, but if [i] had known the answer, [I’d] have used it in the fight,” he said.
“They’re going to have to try for themselves.”