Six years ago, at UFC 100, ESPN’s senior coordinating producer Glenn Jacobs decided to see what the fuss was about. It was that night he saw Georges St-Pierre overcome a groin tear to dominate Thiago Alves, and Brock Lesnar — the Sworded Thorax — avenge a loss to Frank Mir. That was also the night that Dan Henderson delivered the “H-bomb” on Michael Bisping, which turned him into a kind of modern day folk hero. All of this took place over drying pools of Mac Danzig’s blood…blood spilled by Jim Miller during some distant war on the prelims.
Though the sport of MMA was already being covered scantily on the digital side by then, in a roundabout way UFC 100 was the beginning of ESPN’s coverage. Jacobs traces his love of MMA back to July 11, 2009, when he went to a bar with some buddies and caught the action.
“It was obviously a big deal and we thought we should go see what it’s about,” Jacobs says. “And what most interested me at the time was sitting in the bar and listening to other fans talk about the sport. Because what I realized really quickly was that they were just sports fans. They were talking about technique; they were talking about strategy heading into the fight. If this guy does this, or if this guy does this, he can do this. It was the same conversation that sports fans have. To me it was sort of eye-opening at the time, and I thought, this is an area we should be at.”
By UFC 101 in Philadelphia, Jacobs was at the event in person with Jon Anik and the MMA Live crew. That was when Anik’s now-partner Florian fought B.J. Penn and Anderson Silva bewitched Forrest Griffin. By UFC 117, when Chael Sonnen put Silva on his back for four-and-a-half rounds before losing epically via triangle, Jacobs — along with MMA Live producer Kieren Portley, Zach Candito and a few others — had already long been thawing whatever preconceived notions about MMA existed at the top. By UFC 162, when Chris Weidman actually dethroned Anderson Silva, MMA was showing up on SportsCenter’s Top Ten regularly.
And by UFC 189, Jacobs — as well as ESPN — are savvy enough to know that putting Chael Sonnen in the Octagon with Conor McGregor is unique and compelling television. The game’s greatest trash-talkers just shooting the breeze, neither wearing socks with their dress shoes, in the middle of a cage? When you’re ESPN, anything is possible.
Yet it still feels a little novel to see an Octagon set up on the ESPN campus in Bristol. (Full disclosure: This from somebody who worked with ESPN from 2010-2013).
Though the UFC has moved into sectors of the mainstream with its seven-year FOX deal and its new alliance with Reebok, getting ESPN to cover the sport was a huge step to what MMA fans casually call “legitimacy.”
“I never feel like we legitimize anything,” Jacobs says. “I don’t feel like we’re that. I’m glad other people feel that way. I’m glad people care what we think, because that also helps me remain employed, which is great. But I don’t look at us that way. I think this sport for a long time has had great fans, and passionate fans. I think the UFC did a really good job of growing from what it was to where it is now.”
Where they are now is right in the middle of the “Conor McGregor Show.” McGregor is appearing in Bristol at 7 a.m. on a Monday morning — which is 4 a.m. Vegas time, where he’s been training — just a dozen days before UFC 189. He doesn’t know on Monday if he’s fighting Jose Aldo or Chad Mendes, but he knows it will be one of them, and he knows he doesn’t care which. That attitude is familiar. That was also the attitude of Sonnen, who for a long while was the game’s most compelling, most polarizing figure. Sonnen’s now asking the questions of his Irish pay-per-view incarnate.
“Truth-talkers,” Sonnen corrects the producers when the word trash-talkers is mentioned, flashing a rack of white teeth. “I don’t talk trash. I talk the truth.”
Bruce Buffer announces them in the cage to signify the event before the event. Naturally, they kill the segments. First in athletic gear on the feet, demonstrating technique for fighting Aldo, then for Mendes. Later in suits, relaxing on chairs. These segments will air in the days leading up to the fight.
What’s funny is McGregor and Sonnen are a little standoffish with each other between takes. In an alpha sport, where Sonnen showed up out of nowhere and in a fit of transcendence demonstrated to the world how to sell PPVs, McGregor is the new king. There’s some pride in the silences.
Jacobs can’t stop smiling, though. The fight game loves its characters. Here he is throwing Sonnen (now an ESPN analyst) and McGregor (the game’s most audacious figure) in the cage together to do what they do sublimely.
That is, talk.
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(ESPN)
THE OTHER OBVIOUS SIMILARITY is the willingness to fight. When Dan Henderson hurt himself just two weeks ahead of UFC 151, thus forcing him to back out of his light heavyweight fight with Jon Jones, it was Sonnen who volunteered to step in. Jones declined the offer (to great criticism), and the entire event was cancelled.
In that way, McGregor is cut from the Sonnen cloth. When he was told that an unconventional contingency plan was in play — that if Jose Aldo couldn’t go with his injured rib, then Chad Mendes would step in — he didn’t balk. His coach John Kavanagh said that when he informed McGregor of the idea that the Irishman said, “It doesn’t matter to me, they’re all the same.” That’s a hell of a thing for a man with so much to lose to be whimsical about.
“And that’s exactly word for word how it went down,” McGregor says. “I was asleep, he came in, woke me up, said it’s looking like Chad now for the interim. I opened one eye, I said they’re all the same, get out of my room, it’s not time to get up yet, and then I went back to sleep. They are all the same to me, it makes no difference.”
He says this after a wardrobe change. McGregor is now wearing an aqua blue suit with his name stitched to match his signature inside the breast. He is in his element now. Tight, tailored, dapper. After fighting, he says he wouldn’t mind showing up in the world of fashion. One ESPN employee mumbles, “anybody else in that suit you might think, what a douche!” But with McGregor, here’s a figure that’s all beard and sharp angles, his suit just an outward extension of his charisma. This is how he’ll appear with Sonnen on SportsCenter as the fight approaches.
The idea of fighting either a 5-foot-6 power wrestler (with a wicked overhand) or a rangy Muay Thai striker (with fallback jiu-jitsu) could not seem more different.
At least to people on the outside who aren’t the ones carrying a spotlight.
“Listen, it does…not…matter,” McGregor insists. “Of course we want Jose, it should be Jose. There’s no reason. I don’t understand why it’s a question. But, if pussies be pussies, what can I do? I will demolish Chad as well. It makes no difference to me. But we want what we traveled the world for.”
McGregor says he’s ultimately fighting McGregor on July 11 — and that, don’t forget, we’re dealing in the “The McGregor Show.” Still, making Aldo and Mendes indistinguishable might seem not only delusional but careless.
Yet here’s Sonnen, who can simplify an opponent switch with the best of them, echoing McGregor. He says contemplating Aldo on the one hand and Mendes on the other is not the long division that “analysts” make it out to be.
“It’s not,” Sonnen says. “These are all talking points. The myths around fighting…I mean, I’ve done interviews before for an hour on a guy’s footwork. You know what that means? That’s how a guy’s feet move. It’s ridiculous. Or his ‘length,’ or ‘the size advantage.’ Muhammad Ali, the greatest of all time, 198 pounds in his prime. Mike Tyson, the next best, 220 pounds in his prime, never had a reach advantage. None of these things are real, but you deal with people and you just play along and go, ‘oh yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh right, totally different body types, yes, that’s a big deal!’”
They don’t chat when they’re not taping. McGregor has his girlfriend with him, and a small entourage of ESPN people. Sonnen rolls solo. He sits off to the side until it’s time to tape. He mentions he hates waiting around.
“You get yourself ready, you walk out there, and you fight,” Sonnen says. “And that’s it. Conor’s bringing that refreshing attitude. It shouldn’t make a difference. You train hard on your skills and you go out there and fight. What are you proposing if you talk about an opponent change, that you’re going to go into camp and think about the opponent? What’s that have to do with you? You’re out there running the miles, you’re lifting your weights, you’re punching the bag, what’s that got to do with who the opponent is?”
As always with Sonnen, there’s the stage, the curtain and what’s behind the curtain, all being revealed at once.
“These are talking points,” he says. “I’ll do a piece right here, at ESPN, and we’ll kill it in the ratings, and it’ll get everybody thinking. And you’ll see the betting lines change when I’m done, but the reality is it doesn’t make a bit of difference. You walk out there, you punch the other guy. It doesn’t matter if you’re confident about it or not. You go punch the other guy and try not to get punched, that’s the name of the game.”
That’s not dissimilar to how McGregor looks at things. It’s why some people feel like Sonnen handed McGregor the baton.
“The Chael comparison is one I’ve been getting a lot,” McGregor says. “But I’ve been getting compared to everybody in the game at some stage. I’ve been compared to people outside the game…Muhammad Ali, Bruce Lee, I’ve been compared to everybody involved in combat sport. So, it’s normal for me. People look to compare and familiarize themselves with people they are familiar with. It’s normal.
“But this,” he says, looking around. “This is unusual, sitting in an Octagon at ESPN. As the game grows, so does the media I suppose.”
Sonnen likes McGregor’s accessibility on the microphone. And he can empathize with McGregor, who will later head to New York for the Reebok unveiling, then back to California for a spot on Conan O’Brien, then — if he’s successful on July 11 — to a longer line of commitments that one day will end. McGregor, like Sonnen, carries the burden of a salesman everywhere he goes.
“Your only reward for doing a bunch of interviews and being nice to work with is you get to do a whole bunch more interviews,” Sonnen says. “That’s the payoff. From a business side, when you’re both trying to draw revenue and you’ve got a dance partner that’s sitting one out, it’s annoying.
“I had those same things with Anderson Silva. If he would have met me a quarter of the way, a tenth of the way, what could have been…but that’s just the way it goes. You can’t force these guys to participate in their own business, in their own futures. You can’t force them to.”
McGregor says he liked the way Sonnen handled himself in the hype game.
“I certainly purchased the pay-per-views, I certainly purchased the event,” McGregor says. “When he showed up to fight people were interested. I see the similarities, but we fight a lot differently. We are not the same martial artist. But his ability to trash-talk about, get under his opponent’s skin was second to none.”
It’s true. Sonnen is more like Chad Mendes in this scenario — a wrestler who doesn’t mind telegraphing his every intention. And of course there are other things that differentiate the two. Sonnen, now retired, is out of the game after testing positive for myriad banned substances. He’s in a new stage of life. He came close to winning UFC gold, but then again, he was always so far away.
His time was then. McGregor’s is now.
“I enjoy Conor,” Sonnen says, in between takes. “He’s a very nice guy when you visit with him. You can talk to him about anything. He treats people well. He seems to be enjoying this ride, and I think he’s cognizant that it doesn’t last forever, so to make the most of it.”
Again that ornery smile breaks over Sonnen’s face.
“I’d like to see him hang on to a little more of his money,” he says. “I’m not sure in 10 years that financially this story ends well. But, he’s building some good memories. He’s said so himself. He’s fun.”
When asked about his spending sprees, which he has boasted about in the past as a way to “stay hungry,” McGregor juts his foot out.
“Look at them shoes,” he says. “What animal do you think they are from?”
They are black and gold and delicate looking; they make his ankles appear dainty.
“They’re caiman,” he says. “You know, the crocodile? Louis Vuitton.”
He’s getting pay-per-view points and he’s got the country of Ireland on his back, a date at Croke Park in Ireland hanging in his future, a Reebok deal, world tours, commercials, private planes, and hotel rooms with views of not only cities but of everything that lies before him.
“I do like spending money,” he says. “But I’m being sensible. I am intelligent. I am not an idiot.”
*
UFC 189 HAPPENS EXACTLY six years to the day after UFC 100. Back then, when Jacobs first caught wind, it was Brock Lesnar and GSP. In between it was Chael Sonnen. These days it’s Ronda Rousey and Conor McGregor. Everything about this sport is an evolution.
Two days after Sonnen and McGregor taped their segments in Bristol, McGregor appeared on SportsCenter with Dana White from Los Angeles to announce that Aldo was out, and that Mendes was in. Because it’s McGregor, the event didn’t lose its luster. It merely gained a different kind.
“It’s the McGregor show,” McGregor said all along. “People are showing up for McGregor. People are buying the pay-per-view for McGregor. So, McGregor carries on like a professional and McGregor will be there July 10 and he will raise gold on July 11.”
Should he beat Mendes, and carry the interim title into a fight with Aldo, would that make him the UFC’s biggest star? We’re sitting at ESPN, where an Octagon has been brought in from New York, and Chael Sonnen has been flown in from Oregon, and Bruce Buffer from California, just to tape a couple of quick segments with the man they call “Notorious.”
“It’s so hard to say,” Jacobs says, contemplating the UFC’s top stars like he would a SportsCenter Top Ten. “Because Ronda [Rousey] is so incredible, and so much bigger than the sport itself.
“The only other person I’d even consider in that category is if Jon [Jones] ever gets it together again. Obviously a Jon Jones return will be an incredible event. To me, it would be Ronda and Conor at one and two, and I’d have to really think about what order I’d put them in, but I’d put them at one and two.”