A Look Into Conor McGregor’s Troubled Ground Game

Over his entire mixed martial arts (MMA) career, the ground game of featherweight champion Conor McGregor has always come into question with every defeat, and even every victory. “The Notorious One’s” current professional MMA record currently sits at 19-3, with each loss coming by submission. McGregor suffered his first ever MMA loss against Artemij Sitenkov

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Over his entire mixed martial arts (MMA) career, the ground game of featherweight champion Conor McGregor has always come into question with every defeat, and even every victory. “The Notorious One’s” current professional MMA record currently sits at 19-3, with each loss coming by submission.

McGregor suffered his first ever MMA loss against Artemij Sitenkov via kneebar in June of 2008. Two years later, McGregor met fellow Irishman Joe Duffy and lost the fight to an arm-triangle choke early in the first round.

These two losses fueled McGregor, who knew he would need to improve on his ground game in order to succeed at the next level. The Irishman would go on to earn his brown belt in jiu-jitsu under SBG head coach John Kavanagh.

The UFC received its first taste of McGregor’s ground game in August of 2013 against fellow featherweight contender Max Holloway. McGregor dominated Holloway on the ground and cruised to an easy unanimous decision victory, however, it was later revealed McGregor injured his knee in the bout and fought the majority of it with the torn ACL.

conor mcgregor ufc 178This proved to make his performance on the ground all that much more impressive. It also it left the lingering fact that we hadn’t seen his ground game while at one hundred percent. It should also be noted that Holloway isn’t known to be a ground fighter.

The Hawaiian currently only has a blue belt in jiu-jitsu as opposed to McGregor’s brown belt. The MMA world finally got a true look at McGregor’s ground game when he took on Chad Mendes at UFC 189.

Mendes completely dominated McGregor on the ground, bludgeoning him with ruthless elbows and cutting him open for the first time in the Octagon. But Mendes was unable to keep up the grinding pace, which McGregor capitalized on and KO’d Mendes in the closing moments of the second round.

Conor and MendesMendes was taking McGregor down at will and exposed major holes in the Irishman’s game, but it was later revealed McGregor fought through the bout with an injured knee and was again not competing at one hundred percent.

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UFC 200 Main Event Poster Leaked On Twitter

There’s been almost a non stop stream of updates regarding the UFC 200 milestone PPV card on July 9, and most of them have stemmed from the featherweight champion Conor McGregor. His short lived retirement cast the massive pay-per-view card in to turmoil last week, and his scheduled opponent Nate Diaz declared he’d be ‘going

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There’s been almost a non stop stream of updates regarding the UFC 200 milestone PPV card on July 9, and most of them have stemmed from the featherweight champion Conor McGregor. His short lived retirement cast the massive pay-per-view card in to turmoil last week, and his scheduled opponent Nate Diaz declared he’d be ‘going on vacation.’

Rumours were flying in from all angles, but most people believed the promotion was resorting to WWE-type tactics to further promote this rematch.

McGregorDiazPre-FightFace

It appears after weeks of speculation the UFC 200 main event has finally been made. On the set of ‘Good Morning America’ Wednesday morning, USA Today’s Chamatkar Sandhu tweeted the following picture:

Jones is coming fresh off of a unanimous decision victory over top light heavyweight Ovince St-Preux at UFC 197 this past Saturday. Cormier was sitting cage-side calling the action as his rival made his long awaited return to the octagon after over a year-long layoff form the sport.

Cormier vs Jones

Originally the July card was set to be headlined with a rematch between UFC featherweight champion Conor McGregor, against the man to hand him his first UFC career loss, Nate Diaz. McGregor, however, was reluctant to make some of the necessary travels required for his media obligations, and was thus removed from the summer card.

The Irishman would go on a social media tirade that would set the MMA world on fire, creating great skepticism as to if McGregor would in fact fight at UFC 200. UFC President Dana White has apparently stuck to his guns however, and has kept the Irishman off the card in favor of Cormier vs Jones.

So I guess we can call the beef between the UFC and Conor McGregor legitimate now?

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Conor McGregor Finally Issues Official Statement On Retirement

Since announcing his retirement and thrusting the MMA world into a frenzy, UFC featherweight champion Conor McGregor has finally come out of the shadows to tell his side of the story. McGregor issued a statement on his Facebook page Thursday claiming: “I am just trying to do my job and fight here.  I am paid to

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Since announcing his retirement and thrusting the MMA world into a frenzy, UFC featherweight champion Conor McGregor has finally come out of the shadows to tell his side of the story. McGregor issued a statement on his Facebook page Thursday claiming:

“I am just trying to do my job and fight here. 
I am paid to fight. I am not yet paid to promote”.

McGregor then spoke of his lengthly media obligations in the past, and how they may have finally caught up with him in his UFC 196 defeat to Nate Diaz.

“There comes a time when you need to stop handing out flyers and get back to the damn shop.
50 world tours, 200 press conferences, 1 million interviews, 2 million photo shoots, and at the end of it all I’m left looking down the barrel of a lens, staring defeat in the face, thinking of nothing but my incorrect fight preparation. And the many distractions that led to this.” 

“Notorious” then described his request with the UFC to allow him to do a bit more training rather than promoting:

“I will not do this if I am back on the road handing out flyers again. I will always play the game and play it better than anybody, but just for this one, where I am coming off a loss, I asked for some leeway where I can just train and focus. I did not shut down all media requests. I simply wanted a slight adjustment. But it was denied.”

The Irishman then explained his retirement tweet as a ploy to generate promotion for the event as a gesture of good will:

“There had been 10 million dollars allocated for the promotion of this event is what they told me. So as a gesture of good will, I went and not only saved that 10 million dollars in promotion money, I then went and tripled it for them. And all with one tweet. Keep that 10 mill to promote the other bums that need it. My shows are good.” 

McGregor did offer one final, and what seems to be non-negotiable, solution to the predicament with the UFC:

“I will offer, like I already did, to fly to New York for the big press conference that was scheduled, and then I will go back into training. With no distractions. If this is not enough or they feel I have not deserved to sit this promotion run out this one time, well then I don’t know what to say.”

Finally “The Notorious One” answered the question that has been on all our minds, fans and media alike:

“For the record also – 
For USADA and for the UFC and my contract stipulations – 
I AM NOT RETIRED.”

According to UFC president Dana White, “Notorious” and UFC brass bumped heads over the promotional scheduling for UFC 200 as it conflicted with the Irishman’s training. McGregor refused to attend the press conference that is scheduled to take place this Friday in Las Vegas, and thus was removed from the card by White. McGregor responded by sending out this Tweet that would send fight-fan’s worlds upside-down:

UFC brass has yet to officially respond to this statement, as a result it is unknown if they will stick to their guns and keep the Irishman off of the blockbuster card.

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Dana White: Edgar vs. Aldo Could Be For Real Featherweight Title

Since current UFC featherweight champion Conor McGregor is currently teasing the MMA world with his retirement, UFC President Dana White has decided to do some teasing of his own. In a recent interview with ‘The Herd’ Wednesday afternoon, White addressed the growing mess of speculation surrounding McGregor: White also stated that the current interim title

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Since current UFC featherweight champion Conor McGregor is currently teasing the MMA world with his retirement, UFC President Dana White has decided to do some teasing of his own. In a recent interview with ‘The Herd’ Wednesday afternoon, White addressed the growing mess of speculation surrounding McGregor:

White also stated that the current interim title bout between Frankie Edgar and Jose Aldo could possibly be for the actual belt.

Due to a recent dispute between “Notorious” and the UFC, McGregor has been removed from the blockbuster card and has even teased retirement.

Now the rematch between Aldo and Edgar, who took center stage back at UFC 156, could have even bigger implications then before. Originally the winner was to be crowned the interim title holder and go on to face McGregor to unify the two titles.

Now it seems if McGregor is to stay retired, this bout could be contested for the true featherweight crown. Aldo owns a victory over Edgar from their previous title bout at UFC 156, where Aldo defeated Edgar via unanimous decision to retain his title.

McGregor has yet to officially announce retirement aside from his cryptic social media post Tuesday afternoon, but his time-table to make a decision seems to be getting shorter and shorter if he wants to remain the 145-pound champion.

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Nate Diaz Has Some Harsh Words For Conor McGregor & His Fans

UFC rivals Conor McGregor and Nate Diaz shared one of the most intense and entertaining rivalries in the sports history before they fought. The two were paired on just 11 days notice after lightweight champion Rafael dos Anjos pulled out of the UFC 196 main event bout with McGregor. The heated trash talk that came

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UFC rivals Conor McGregor and Nate Diaz shared one of the most intense and entertaining rivalries in the sports history before they fought. The two were paired on just 11 days notice after lightweight champion Rafael dos Anjos pulled out of the UFC 196 main event bout with McGregor. The heated trash talk that came from just under two weeks worth of press conferences and interviews was instantly classic, and really laid the perfect stage for their highly thrilling encounter on March 5.

The man made to eat his words, of which there were copious amounts, that night in Vegas was McGregor. The aftermath of the thoroughly exciting welterweight affair was filled with mixed opinions. Many were impressed by the Irishman’s humble demeanour in defeat, but most just took the chance to bash McGregor in the moments following his first UFC loss.

Nate

One man who has not only been vocal about his feelings towards Conor McGregor, but also abut the UFC is Nate Diaz. His media tour since defeating ‘The Notorious’ has been filled with incredible insights in to the mind of one of the most popular fighters today. Once the news emerged that UFC 200 would feature another welterweight fight between the two, the Stockton grappler/boxer didn’t take long to start the beef brewing again.

Here’s his latest interview with FOX Sports, where he once again makes his feelings known about ‘The Notorious’ and also Frankie Edgar:

Nate Diaz 2

“I’m sure he’ll be all right when I beat him, I’m top of the food chain. I’ve been fighting top 10 competition for eight years. Losing to me is not so bad.

“You can lose to some lame ass or you can lose to a real (expletive) G fighter. I don’t think it will hurt him too much. He’ll be all right.”

“I’ve lost decisions that I didn’t really lose and if I asked to get a rematch it was out of the question like are you kidding me, don’t even ask,” Diaz said. “But this guy is getting praised for wanting a rematch. It’s like get the (expletive) out of here, (expletive), this is the fight game….

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Holly Holm Makes Interesting Argument About Diaz vs. McGregor 2

Former UFC women’s bantamweight champion Holly Holm had a bad night at UFC 196, much like Conor McGregor did. ‘The Preacher’s Daughter’ faced Miesha Tate in the co-main event of the March 5 pay-per-view event, in an attempted first defense of the title she’d won so convincingly from Ronda Rousey at UFC 193 just three

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Former UFC women’s bantamweight champion Holly Holm had a bad night at UFC 196, much like Conor McGregor did. ‘The Preacher’s Daughter’ faced Miesha Tate in the co-main event of the March 5 pay-per-view event, in an attempted first defense of the title she’d won so convincingly from Ronda Rousey at UFC 193 just three months prior. It wasn’t to be Holm’s night, at least in terms of the result, as she was choked unconscious by ‘Cupcake’ in round five, although she had arguably won every round leading up to the finish.

Her performance was never really in question, it was just that Tate’s plan worked to perfection, and there was really nothing Holm could do once that choke was locked in. There was talk of an immediate rematch, then the rumours switched to Ronda Rousey somehow leap frogging Holm in the running, but eventually Tate was paired with Amanda Nunes for UFC 200 in July.

Miesha Tate 1

So where does Conor McGregor come in to the conversation? Facing Nate Diaz in the UFC 196 headlining bout, ‘The Notorious’ was also finished, but perhaps in more dominant fashion than Holm was against Tate. The ‘hype train,’ as it was labelled by many, had come to a screeching halt, and the consensus opinion was that McGregor would head back down to featherweight to defend the title he’d won from Jose Aldo at UFC 194. This was not to be, as just weeks later the news broke that McGregor and Diaz would fight once again at welterweight, and also at UFC 200, serving as the main event.

FiveReasonsMcGregorLostToDiazPhoto

So why has Conor McGregor received different treatment than Holly Holm, or pretty much anyone else in UFC history? UFC president Dana White recently said it’s because he always shows up to fight and never drops out injured, take that statement as you will.

Holly Holm sounds a little frustrated during a recent interview, and makes an interesting point about the Diaz vs. McGregor 2 booking…

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