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At UFC 264, Conor McGregor lost more than just a single fight to Dustin Poirier. He lost more than a trilogy. He lost the fantasy. What do I mean? All-time great fighters who are also wildly popular among fans, a group of which McGregor is unquestionably a member, have a period in their careers during which they're perceived in a manner utterly divorced from any semblance of reality.
Consider B.J. Penn in his 2008 prime, as he prepared to challenge Georges St. Pierre for the welterweight title. Penn was a dominant lightweight champion who had previously won the welterweight belt by smashing Matt Hughes in 2004, and had given St. Pierre a very competitive fight in 2006 in a non-title welterweight fight. There were discussions not only of Penn becoming welterweight king for a second time, but going up to middleweight and fighting for the title there. Further support for this idea came from the fact that in 2005 Penn had fought to a reasonably competitive decision loss against undefeated future light heavyweight champ Lyoto Machida.
Looking at it rationally, this was absolute lunacy. Penn was 5-foot-9 with a 70-inch reach, and rather pudgy at 170 pounds. He had beaten Hughes in early 2004, but welterweights had become vastly larger and more skilled since then, and as for middleweight? Many of them were as big as the young Machida he had faced. Moreover, Penn had been outwrestled and taken down by St. Pierre, as well as by Hughes in their 2006 rematch, losing both. Fans reasoned those away by claiming that Penn should have won the former and wasn't properly motivated for the latter, as he had dominated Hughes for the first two rounds. Nevertheless, what would stop the much bigger middleweight grapplers from taking Penn down, too? And yet, due to the aura of supreme martial arts talent so perfectly encapsulated in his nickname, “The Prodigy,” fans openly wondered whether Penn could become middleweight champion. When did Penn lose his fantasy?
It wasn't so much after his rematch loss to St. Pierre, who was building his own fantasy, but rather, after his first defeat to Frankie Edgar. Edgar was smaller than Penn, and regarded as nowhere near Penn's league. The prospect of Penn losing to someone who was the same size as him or less was utterly absurd. I remember very well the memes and humorous Photoshopped images that circulated around message boards at the time, including one that imagined Penn and Edgar replacing Matthew McConaughey and Kate Hudson, the protagonists of “How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days,” in a new movie called “How to Lose a Fight in 10 Seconds.” When Edgar won, the fantasy of Penn was shattered. Notice that after that loss, the expectations for Penn going forward became far more in line with reality.
Speaking of middleweight, another fine example is Anderson Silva. In his prime, he was seen as the ultimate martial arts master, the kind one only sees in movies. He didn't just have an aura of supreme talent, like Penn, but was considered supremely unbeatable. Consider all the hype and excitement about “The Spider” facing Jon Jones in what would have possibly been the biggest fight in MMA history. Again, thinking realistically, this was insane. While Silva had very good takedown defense and was highly skilled off his back, he could still be taken and kept down. Consider, for instance, Silva’s fight in Pride Fighting Championships against Alexander Otsuka. Silva was slimmer back then, weighing in around 180 pounds, while Otsuka was about 205 pounds. While Silva rightly won, Otsuka managed to repeatedly take him down and keep him there.
Even accounting for Silva becoming moderately bigger and stronger over the next few years, with better defensive grappling, how was he to stop Jon Jones, who walked around well in excess of 230 pounds, and was just a tiny bit more skilled than Otsuka as a wrestler?
And yet, the fantasy overpowered reality for many fans. The fantasy took a severe hit in the first Chael Sonnen fight, not only because the challenger consistently took Silva down and kept him there, but because he landed some hard strikes on the feet, despite not being known at all for his standup.
Many may think the fantasy died with the first Chris Weidman fight, when Silva’s clowning ended with him knocked out, but that's not entirely true. In their rematch, Silva was still a -175 favorite against a much better version of the Sonnen who had knocked him out cold less than six months before? How to explain this except as pure fantasy?
Of course, the best example may be Ronda Rousey. Who can ever forget Joe Rogan stating that not only was she the greatest female athlete in any sport ever, a comment as insulting as it is ignorant, but that she would defeat at least half the male bantamweights on the UFC roster?
Now, let's get back to McGregor. What about his own fantasy? He was seen as a superlative, lightning-fast, pinpoint-precise striker on a level no other mixed martial artist had achieved. This peaked when he won the UFC lightweight championship from Eddie Alvarez, a masterful performance after which suddenly, all seemed possible. Rationalizing back in 2016 that Nate Diaz was just that great of a welterweight, many suggested that McGregor could win a title at 170. Now, this might not seem as crazy as speculation of Penn possibly winning the middleweight belt in 2008, especially since McGregor is about the same height as Penn, with a four-inch reach advantage, but given the continued evolution and development of MMA, it was equally improbable.
Amusingly, McGregor's next fight in MMA was against a man with his own great mythology, Khabib Nurmagomedov. And, despite all of McGregor's problems and lack of focus on the sport since the Alvarez victory, or the plain fact that Nurmagomedov could very likely replicate what Chad Mendes had done to the Irishman in Round 1 for an entire fight, the Dagestani was only a small favorite.
Yet despite McGregor's loss to Nurmagomedov, the fantasy persisted. I was one of the few people to select Dustin Poirier in the Sherdog Pick ‘Em for UFC 257 in January, and could not, for the life of me, understand how McGregor was a monster favorite at -300 to -350. After all, if Diaz had done so well against McGregor, why wouldn't a much better striker with better defense, who was also incredibly tough and durable, do even better? So powerful was this fantasy, in fact, that it partially survived that loss as well. McGregor was almost even money for the rubber match at UFC 264. Why, when he had been beaten so decisively so recently? What was going to change?
The reasoning was that McGregor was incredibly motivated now and would also make the necessary tactical adjustments. While there is certainly evidence for the latter, the former is purely fantasy thinking. You mean to tell me that McGregor wasn't motivated to main event UFC 257 on Fight Island against a longtime rival, that he neglected his training because the fight wasn't a big enough deal? If that's actually the case, and he couldn't even get up for that, McGregor has no business fighting at all and is better off retiring before he gets hurt. Moreover, as with other fantastical thinking, it's ignoring stark reality. In this case, the two Diaz fights. McGregor was dominating the first fight before gassing and getting caught, very different from what happened against Poirier the first time, yet in the rematch, taking a far more cautious approach, he managed a razor-thin decision victory that is still hotly debated to this day. There wasn't a magical, complete turnaround in fortunes.
Now that we have fully described the phenomena of a fighter as a fantasy, what does it mean for McGregor going forward, and what can we as MMA fans learn from it? One quality I notice about fighters who have large myths built around them is that they're all massive pay-per-view draws. However, once the fantasy dies, its death is permanent, and the fighter’s popularity wanes. I can't think of a single great fighter who, once the mythical portion of their career was over, managed to regain it. They might still win fights, even important ones, but they're never viewed in the same terms. That's important to keep in mind for McGregor, the biggest pay-per-view draw in MMA history. He's probably still the biggest draw after this second loss to Poirier, for lack of competition, but I expect his numbers to fall and continue doing so. And he isn't ever going to regain his earlier popularity. It's a sobering thought not only for the Irishman but for a UFC that heavily relies on the extra revenue he brings in.
For MMA fans, it's obvious why such fantasies exist. Sports at their best and most enjoyable create truly magical moments involving larger-than-life athletes. Athletes who almost resemble demigods more than real people. And this can easily spawn magical thinking. But when deciding who will win a fight, let alone putting money on the belief, it has to be tempered with reality, which is as hard and cruel in MMA as in any sport. One has to remind themselves that these fantastical champions, great as they are, are much closer to the talented, unsung contenders looking for their own time in the sun than we think. So by all means, indulge in a little bit of fantasy. But don't let it lead you astray. In the case of McGregor, that's unlikely to ever happen again for most fans.