Conor McGregor’s meteoric rise to superstardom is unlike anything we’ve ever witnessed before in the sport of mixed martial arts. With his larger-than-life personality, innate charisma and quick wit, McGregor quickly drew people’s attention when he signed for the UFC in 2013.
However, it was the fact that he was able to back up his talk with spectacular action in the Octagon that truly marked him out as something special, leading to fame and fortune as the UFC’s first ever simultaneous two-division champion and their biggest ever pay-per-view draw.
A star of this magnitude wasn’t born overnight though and there’s more to ‘The Notorious’ Irishman than just natural punching power and the gift of the gab. His unflappable self-belief, his willingness to take chances others won’t, his ability to stay calm and clinical in the heat of the battle and his surprisingly cerebral approach to studying the fight game have all played a part in getting to this stage in his career.
In the pages that follow, we’ll take a revealing look at some of the people, places and philosophies that have had influenced McGregor over the years, and helped mold him into MMA’s biggest star.
Bruce Lee
You’d be hard pushed to find an MMA fighter who hasn’t been influenced by the late, great martial arts icon, Bruce Lee, and Conor McGregor is no different.
Not just a movie legend, Lee was a true student of all aspects of fighting, even creating his own unique martial art, Jeet Kune Do, which he described as “the style of no style.”
Lee’s open-minded, all-inclusive philosophy has led to some hailing him as one of the founding fathers of mixed martial arts, which wouldn’t become a reality until many years after his death, and McGregor is among those who have come to recognise him as a pioneer.
”His philosophy, his belief that there were no styles,” McGregor told UFC.com when asked how Lee had influenced him. “If you were specialized in one style, you were a rookie in 10 other styles. He was formless. He adapted to everything. There was not one set pattern, movement or routine. He was ahead of the curve.”
Lee’s influence on McGregor’s own fighting philosophy is easy to recognise, such as prior to his fight with Jose Aldo when he stated that, “I’ll enter the contest formless and fearless,” and told reporters that he visualized his opponents as being just “a blank face with a different body type.”
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