Conor McGregor’s meteoric rise through the Ultimate Fighting Championship entered new speeds on Saturday after he defeated Chad Mendes with a second-round stoppage at UFC 189 to clinch the interim UFC featherweight title.
Fans of the Irishman turned out in droves at Las Vegas’ MGM Grand as McGregor finally took his place on the throne he’s been seeking for so long.
Robbie Lawler defeated Rory MacDonald to retain his UFC Welterweight Championship in the co-main event. It was a bloody brawl that will undoubtedly contend for 2015’s Fight of the Year and potentially bigger plaudits.
Here’s a look at all the results from Saturday’s main card:
Warning: Some videos herein contain language NSFW.
Jose Aldo may have been the target McGregor was searching for, but Mendes nevertheless made for an entertaining opponent in what proved to be the uncomfortable juxtaposition of styles that was anticipated.
Throughout the fight, Mendes constantly worked to implement his ground game and even succeeded with several takedowns, but he couldn’t keep the wily McGregor pinned down.
It was a left hand from the Dubliner that floored Mendes right after he emerged from one of their ground grapples, with mere seconds remaining in the second round.
McGregor continued to work toward staging a future fight with Mendes in his post-fight comments, and Ariel Helwani of MMAFighting.com quoted him as saying he suffered worse injuries in training than the supposed bruised rib that ruled the Brazilian out:
From the mount position, Money looked as though he might cause McGregor some serious concern, but if critics had doubts in his ability to withstand assault prior to this bout, they’re likely to have subsided.
Sticking to the fight blueprint, McGregor made full use of that huge eight-inch reach advantage to keep his enemy at bay, flicking wild kicks in Mendes’ direction that struggled to do major damage.
The Californian did a fine job of evading those frontal assaults by and large, but a series of blows to the body left their mark on Mendes, who was visibly gassed within minutes of the bout.
McGregor was less visibly drained and insisted on talking smack to his counterpart, something that Mendes gave credit for as an intimidation factor:
Mendes of course deserves his credit for taking the fight on just a fortnight’s notice. Had he been given the opportunity of a full training camp, we may have seen a different matchup on Saturday, but McGregor was fully deserving of a dominant result.
Speaking in his post-fight comments, Mendes also found time to laud praise upon the Irish supporters who back McGregor, proclaiming he wished “we had support like that,” per the Irish Independent:
First of all, I want to thank Conor for accepting the fight on two weeks, he was training for Aldo that entire time, that’s a completely different match-up for him. The guy is tough. He’s got the talk to back it up.
What’s awesome is this, these Irish guys are crazy. I wish we had support like that for everyone here, it’s unbelievable the support you show for your athletes and I got to come in here and be a part of it. This is something that I’m never going to forget in my life.
Indeed, McGregor’s Celtic pride and patriotism is one of his major appeals; it’s an almost primal allure that gives him such a tenacious aura and makes him one of the most feared presences in the UFC right now.
But the multifaceted specimen showed far more than primal instinct alone to capture his first UFC crown on Saturday, and the victory over Mendes signals that bigger accolades surely sit on the horizon.
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