Sometime before Saturday night Conor McGregor found his fighting soul again. He went five exhausting rounds in a second bout with Nate Diaz and there would be no cocksure bravado or head wagging or slithering around the canvas like an anaconda on the prowl. This was a battle. A test of desire. No talk about money. Just a dirty, ugly scrap that was a refusal to relent.
He was the plumber’s apprentice from Dublin again, swinging for a life. Only this time he was trying to save the life he had built for himself. And that meant he had to be hungry, brutal and smart. When the fight was over and the referee had raised McGregor’s arm, bringing him a five-round redemption in UFC 202, he yelled: “Surprise, surprise motherfuckers: the king is back!” Then he descended from the cage, marching triumphant across the arena floor until he got to the tunnel and nearly collapsed.
His shin throbbed, his ankle – hurt days ago – ached. He hobbled toward his locker room needing strong men to hold him up. But he refused to let the crowd see him that way. Later, he was on crutches and headed to the hospital. He had fought until he couldn’t walk. And there was pride in that. One even bigger than that 13 second knockout of Jose Aldo that had set him on the path of hubris.
“It was a hell of a fight,” he said of Saturday’s contest.
He was tired. His leg hurt and the hospital trip awaited. But he said he had learned a lot about fighting Diaz that he didn’t know when he lost by submission in March. He had studied and practiced. He knew now that Diaz had a deceptively long reach, that the optics of battling this would lure him closer where Diaz would be able to hit him, grab him and pull him down, taking the fight to the canvas where the Californian is stronger. He eyed Diaz warily, careful to stay far away, to not make that one mistake that Diaz would see and exploit. He made sure to punch because that’s what McGregor does best.
Eventually he had sliced open a cut on Diaz’s face and then he hit it again and again until he was wearing his opponent’s blood. Diaz fell to the ground and each time McGregor assessed the situation and realized he couldn’t fall for a fight fought on the American’s strengths. Each time he knocked Diaz down, Diaz got back up.
“He’s a tough motherfucker,” McGregor said. “He took all my shots, I dropped him multiple times.”
McGregor came into the fight expecting it would go the distance. Somehow he knew he wouldn’t be able to end things quickly this time. In many ways, the Aldo fight in UFC 196 had ruined him. Back then he talked a lot about all the cars and he would buy and the money he was making. It was as if McGregor the fighter had been overtaken by McGregor the celebrity. The Irishman almost seemed to care more about the money than the fighting.
Through his recent “retirement” and the decision to pull him from the UFC 200 card, he clearly had focused on the second Diaz fight, assessing it to be a war on the Las Vegas Strip. He talked about the weeks of work he had put in, the extra coaches he had hired to help him get ready for Diaz. This was something his opponent later laughed about – part in admiration, part in scorn. “He followed the leader and he hired all the people who did a great job,” Diaz said.
There will be some who hated this fight, who thought McGregor danced away from Diaz too much. Diaz became flustered and waved his middle finger McGregor’s way. But McGregor would not get lured by the siren song of a taunting Diaz who wanted to bring the fight to his strengths.
Later McGregor talked about a rematch that everyone in the arena seemed to want. Then finally the man who had been serious became a little more like the showman. He smiled - a bit. “Shit is about to hit the fan ... so we will see,” he said.
Still this McGregor was not the McGregor of earlier this year. He held back, he was careful.After he lost to Diaz before he looked at all the comments from other fighters who said he was finished and his rise to the top was done. “I tell you, it lit the fire a little bit,” he said.
And the old Conor McGregor came back. The one who fought hungry, who wanted a win on Saturday like he wanted wins so many years ago. Nate Diaz didn’t give up. But neither did he.
