You have to hand it to Conor McGregor. The man is as smooth as silk, as slick as snot on a doorknob and as cool as polar bear feet.
He’s taking care of business as usual.
Most contenders would be hitting the panic button after hearing news of an …
You have to hand it to ConorMcGregor. The man is as smooth as silk, as slick as snot on a doorknob and as cool as polar bear feet.
He’s taking care of business as usual.
Most contenders would be hitting the panic button after hearing news of an injury that could put the biggest fight of their careers on ice. Not to mention, this news is coming a little over two weeks out from the actual fight.
Fox Sports’ Damon Martin, per Globo in Brazil, reported that UFC featherweight champion Jose Aldo suffered a rib injury during a sparring session on Tuesday. The injury is reportedly a fractured rib, which puts his blockbuster championship showdown with McGregor at UFC 189 in jeopardy.
While everyone else runs around like a chicken with its heads cut off, McGregor tweeted a picture of himself still in full training mode, busting out front splits like he’s on the set of a Jean-Claude Van Damme movie.
Injury news of this magnitude is devastating to the fight community, seeing as Aldo vs. McGregor was billed as the biggest featherweight fight in MMA history. The UFC reportedly spent millions of dollars in promotional efforts for the event, which received a world tour and one of the most ambitious theatrical hype trailers ever for an MMA fight.
When speaking with MMAFighting.com in May, UFC President Dana White said he expected the event to do over a million pay-per-view buys.
“Over a million PPV buys and we’ll probably break even. That’s how much money we’re spending. We’re spending lot of money. …It’s the most expensive commercial we’ve ever shot, but without a doubt the most bad ass commercial we’ve ever done.”
According to MMAFighting’sGuilherme Cruz, Aldo’s injury could possibly require three-to-four weeks of treatment.
He has yet to officially pull out of the fight.
JordyMcElroy is a featured columnist for Bleacher Report. He also is the MMA writer for FanRag Sports and co-founder of The MMA Bros.
The lineup for UFC 189 is currently under fire, and John Hathaway is the latest confirmed fighter to fall victim to injury.
While a fractured rib (h/t Globo/Brazil) suffered by featherweight king Jose Aldo has his highly anticipated bout with Cono…
The lineup for UFC 189 is currently under fire, and John Hathaway is the latest confirmed fighter to fall victim to injury.
While a fractured rib (h/t Globo/Brazil) suffered by featherweight king Jose Aldo has his highly anticipated bout with Conor McGregor in serious jeopardy, the British welterweight was forced to withdraw from his upcoming bout with Gunnar Nelson due to an undisclosed injury suffered in training as confirmed by UFC officials on Tuesday.
The news was originally reported by MMA Junkie and is the latest setback in a string of rough turns for the once-touted prospect.
The 27-year-old London Shootfighters representative won seven of his first eight showings inside the Octagon, but the past three years have seen his momentum stall dramatically. The Hitman was sidelined for 17 months while he recovered from illness and injury, only to have his comeback bout against Dong Hyun Kim soured via a vicious spinning back elbow in the third round of their main event tilt at The Ultimate Fighter: China Finalein March 2014.
Furthermore, Hathaway’s continued battle with Chron’s Disease has kept him on the shelf in the 16 months since his bout with Stun Gun. While there has been no official replacement named as of yet, according to MMA Junkie the promotion is seeking to fill the slot opposite Nelson for UFC 189.
Where Hathaway would have been looking to turn things around on July 11 in Las Vegas, the Iceland native shares the same objective. The grappling ace suffered the first loss of his professional career at the hands of Rick Story at Fight Night 53 as he was edged out by the Washington State-born powerhouse via split decision on the judges’ scorecards.
Duane Finley is a featured columnist for Bleacher Report. All quotes are obtained firsthand unless noted otherwise.
We all knew that this day would come. Between the next-level trash-talk, the unprecedented world tour, the insane promos — both of which were described by Dana White as “the most expensive ever” — and the talks that the event would need to sell 1 million+ pay-per-views for the UFC to break even (which early figures indicated would happen), we knew that the MMA Gods would simply never allow the UFC 189 megafight between Conor McGregor and Jose Aldo to come to fruition. We knew this, yet we held out hope.
Which is why, perhaps more than ever before, it hurts so much to say this.
According to various sources (but first broke by Combate’s Anna Hissa), Jose Aldo fractured a rib in training early this morning. Two and a half weeks out from UFC 189. While his fight with McGregor has yet to be officially called off, one has to imagine that it’s only a matter of time.
We all knew that this day would come. Between the next-level trash-talk, the unprecedented world tour, the insane promos — both of which were described by Dana White as “the most expensive ever” – and the talks that the event would need to sell 1 million+ pay-per-views for the UFC to break even (which early figures indicated would happen), we knew that the MMA Gods would simply never allow the UFC 189 megafight between Conor McGregor and Jose Aldo to come to fruition. We knew this, yet we held out hope.
Which is why, perhaps more than ever before, it hurts so much to say this.
According to various sources (but first broke by Combate’s Anna Hissa), Jose Aldo fractured a rib in training early this morning. Two and a half weeks out from UFC 189. While his fight with McGregor has yet to be officially called off, one has to imagine that it’s only a matter of time.
God. Dammit.
Now of course, some have been quick to note that Aldo’s injury has come just weeks after his drug testing fiasco, but can we just not right now? Can’t we all just wallow in misery and drink ourselves into a midday coma before Johnny Conspiracy starts spouting his mouth off? GAHHH I HATE EVERYTHING RIGHT NOW.
This sport is the worst, you guys. THE WORST. We’ll have more on this story as it develops. Go f*ck yourselves.
There has obviously been no end of name calling between Jose Aldo and Conor McGregor during their lengthy, well-publicized feud over the UFC featherweight title.
As the two archrivals continue to skip gleefully down the path toward an epic grudge match…
There has obviously been no end of name calling between Jose Aldo and Conor McGregor during their lengthy, well-publicized feud over the UFC featherweight title.
As the two archrivals continue to skip gleefully down the path toward an epic grudge match and a mutually beneficial payday at UFC 189, they’ve hurled every offensive and profane thing they can think of at each other.
Frankly, we wouldn’t have it any other way.
Of late, however, the discourse has gotten truly nasty. As the build to this fight enters the home stretch, Aldo and McGregor have each resorted to the vilest, most insulting slur in all of MMA marketing.
They’ve called each other the dirtiest word of them all: wrestler.
“I feel after the first exchange, he’ll turn into a grappler,” sneered McGregor, during a media scrum in Aldo’s home country of Brazil while on the pair’s gala World Tour. “One-hundred percent.”
It’s funny to think a sport that is at least 50 percent wrestling would reserve such disdain for words like grappler, but the implication here is clear. You can tell this assessment of the 145-pound champion’s skills is meant to be particularly cutting because the loquacious McGregor needs just over a dozen words to deploy it.
This is a staple of the 26-year-old Irishman’s pre-fight banter. Ask him something about himself and his answers sometimes stretch into soliloquies. Bring up his opponent and the retorts get much shorter, more biting. McGregor barks a curt one-liner from behind his black Ray Bans and then juts his chin as if to say, that’s all I’ve got to say about that.
Credit Aldo’s camp for being a little bit more descriptive on the subject. When asked to respond to McGregor’s claims that he’ll force Aldo to abandon the striking game, coach Andre Pederneiras this week told MMA Fighting.com’s Guilherme Cruz that the challenger has things the wrong way around.
And he didn’t restrict himself to 140 characters or less:
In my mind, Conor will be the one to become a wrestler. I believe McGregor will become a wrestler in the middle of the fight. Where he believes he’s good at, in the middle of the fight he will realize he’s not that good. He will try to grapple with Aldo. He doesn’t have an idea who he’s going to fight. He will go for takedowns during the fight.
Whether you take the short way or the long way around the topic, the meaning is the same. Both Aldo and McGregor are fearsome and prideful stand-up fighters, and each believes his opponent is headed for a shock.
Technically flawless punching combinations and crushing leg kicks have typified Aldo’s recent UFC career. He hasn’t lost in nearly a decade and has finished 14 of his 25 career wins via some form of knockout. If his numbers have slacked off a bit of late—just two stoppages during seven fights in the Octagon—it’s likely because he’s spent the last four years taking on the rest of the best featherweights in the world.
McGregor, meanwhile, is known for an uncanny knack at guiding his opponents into his straight left hand. A relative neophyte who made his promotional debut just over two years ago, he’s an enormous 145-pounder who seems to get exponentially better every time we see him. So far, he’s ended four of his five UFC bouts with early knockouts, though over a far less impressive array of opponents.
Both are secure in their beliefs that the other guy has never fought someone like them before. Both are certain that when confronted with the extent of his own foolishness in the cage on July 11, their opponent will quickly lose his taste for the kickboxing game.
The numbers, however, tell us that neither one of these men is particularly likely to abruptly turn into Dan Gable.
According to the UFC’s official statistics, Aldo enjoys 72 percent “takedown accuracy” after landing 13 of 18 total attempts. That’s actually more than you might expect from a KO artist like the champion, but 10 of those takedown tries came in just two fights—Aldo’s particularly tough decision win over Mark Hominick at UFC 129 and his fourth-round stoppage of Chan Sung Jung at UFC 163.
In total, he’s opted to try to take things to the ground in just four of his fights. The rest stayed on the feet, where he largely dominated.
UFC statisticians say McGregor is 5-of-6 in career takedown attempts, for an accuracy rate of 83 percent. Like Aldo, though, he landed the bulk of those attempts (four) during just a single fight—his three-round decision victory over Max Holloway in August 2013.
The fact of the matter is that both Aldo and McGregor have been too overwhelmingly good at their disciplines of choice to waste much time with anything else. That alone makes the point of their competing boasts clear. They contend they’ll be among the first to force the other guy out of his comfort zone and into a fainthearted tactical Hail Mary.
Because of the way UFC ownership has long marketed its bouts, the decision to wrestle is often cast as the cowardly move. It’s a laughable construct, considering it is precisely wrestling that puts the mixed in mixed martial arts, but the bias is so pervasive that neither McGregor nor Pederneiras has to explain the meaning of their above quotes.
If either Aldo or McGregor opts for a grappling match, it will be considered unmanly. Especially by the other guy. Inferring that your opponent will choose to wrestle you is also a clever way of saying, I might lose the fight, but I sure won’t lose the war.
It’s all blather, really. All puffery. All posturing.
Six months after the bad blood is finally settled, nobody will look at the reigning featherweight champ and think he got there through less-than-admirable means.
Still, suggesting it would be spineless for your opponent to do anything but stand in the middle of the cage and meet you head-to-head looks good in print. Not to mention, both McGregor and Aldo believe it might pressure the other into the sort of fight they think they’ll win.
Even if the taunts and brags are empty, only one of them can be right—and that’s just one of the things that will make this matchup so much fun, once the name-calling portion of the performance is complete.
Jose Aldo does not like Conor McGregor one bit, and he wants to show him in the most physical way possible. Whether that comes before UFC 189 doesn’t matter at this point.
Speaking at a press conference in Rio de Janeiro (via Guilherme Cruz of MMA…
Jose Aldo does not like ConorMcGregor one bit, and he wants to show him in the most physical way possible. Whether that comes before UFC 189 doesn’t matter at this point.
Speaking at a press conference in Rio deJaneiro (via Guilherme Cruz of MMAFighting.com), Aldo came just shy of promising to rough up his trash-talking Irish foe at the first sign of provocation. “The fight is around the corner now, so we can do something more because nobody will do anything about it,” he said. “If there’s any trash talk, I know what I’m going to do.”
McGregor has been picking at Aldo since he first joined the UFC, but things got especially heated when the two hit the road alongside promotional brass on a globetrotting media tour to promote the fight. With each stop, McGregor pushed Aldo further (all documented in the UFC’s Embedded series) until he famously snatched the belt away from Aldo in front of a raucous Dublin crowd.
While this may sound like generic pre-fight boasting from Aldo, think again. The long-reigning featherweight champ made some big (and honest) claims about the fight that will not sit well with the Nevada State Athletic Commission or UFC boardroom, “There’s no fine or suspension anymore. After everything they spent, they won’t cancel this fight for anything.” And Aldo later said, “It would be great if there’s a brawl. I hope that happens. That’s what people want.”
There is, of course, precedent to Aldo’s claims. A light heavyweight title fight between Jon Jones and Daniel Cormier headlined UFC 182. Months earlier, however, the two got into a huge scrap that sent them (and UFC VP of Public Relations Dave Sholler) tumbling off the stage.
Both men would be fined, but the fight would eventually go down without interference. With that in mind, even if Aldo and McGregor had an extracurricular brawl, it is incredibly unlikely the UFC or the NSAC would take action to jeopardize what is sure to be an incredibly lucrative night.
The two are slated to legally punch one another on July 11 at UFC 189 in Las Vegas, Nevada. Keep an eye on Bleacher Report over the coming weeks for more news on the fight.
The UFC 189 megafight between Jose Aldo and Conor McGregor on July 11 moves ever closer and a Brazilian TV network has come up with a cool way to promote the fight.
They have reimagined Aldo beating a few fictional fighters Street Fighter II-sty…
The UFC 189megafight between Jose Aldo and ConorMcGregor on July 11 moves ever closer and a Brazilian TV network has come up with a cool way to promote the fight.
They have reimagined Aldo beating a few fictional fighters Street Fighter II-style before McGregor enters the Octagon and a pixelated Bruce Buffer let’s us know “It’s Time.”
Well, unfortunately it is not time for a little while yet, but this has got us even more excited for the fight.
You have to hand it to Conor McGregor. The man is as smooth as silk, as slick as snot on a doorknob and as cool as polar bear feet.
