Whether you personally consider it psychological warfare or simply chatting pure shite, you can't deny Conor McGregor has carved a niche in combat sports for his unique brand of dishing out abuse to opponents pretty much everyone in the UFC.
Most recipients have crumbled so, if you do find the whole thrash-talking front entertaining, it's oddly refreshing when another fighter turns the tables on the brash Dub. And you get the impression that UFC lightweight champion Eddie Alvarez genuinely doesn't care much for his featherweight counterpart.
The Underground King spent the day with Ariel Helwani for MMA Fighting in an entertaining day-in-the-life-style documentary, and naturally a potentially massive clash with McGregor in New York for UFC 205 was a hot topic of discussion.
Alvarez told Helwani:
I feel like if this fight is signed and it happens, I feel like I'm about to tell the whole world that there's no Santa Claus. And everybody is gonna be disappointed. There's no Santa Claus. He don't exist. It was a lie and I'm gonna steal the magic from everyone. The magic is gone. And I can't wait. It's gonna be a great time for me.
Where we differ is I'm more about what's real and I think he's more about perception. This game is changing. I'm watching it change. The game of MMA is changing. Because the business is coming before the sport now, the perception is becoming more important than what really is. This is why I said I don't think they'll take the fight. If the perception is the most important, then you don't try to beat the best guy in the world. You don't go after me. You go after the guy who looks like the best guy in the world, but really isn't.
Alvarez claimed McGregor would be an "easy" opponent after breaking up Rafael Dos Anjos to claim lightweight gold in July, and the Philly fighter maintains that McGregor would be no match for himself nor indeed any of his training partners at Frankie Edgar's UFC Gym:
In a sparring room, there's always a guy, we call him the rest round. [McGregor is] the rest round. He's the guy you grab when you're super tired and you go, ‘Hey, c'mon man, let's do a round.'
[If] he comes to our gym and trains, he's the rest round. For everyone, not just me. For Frankie [Edgar], for Edson [Barboza], for Marlon [Moraes]. For any one of us.
The 32-year-old also didn't buy into claims that McGregor's rematch with Nate Diaz was like the UFC's own incarnation of Ali-Frazier; indeed he wasn't even impressed by the contest as a whole, at least beyond the first round and a half:
I was impressed by like about seven minutes of it. About the first seven minutes and then it all looked really sloppy and didn't look of championship caliber to me. It didn't look like a guy who spent $300,000 on a training camp. I could have did that shit for $5, what just went on there. I think he could have spent a lot less and got a lot more.
Past the eight-minute mark, I don't see anything but being dominant. I think he can do well, because it's easy to be technical in the first round or two. It's easy to be technical. But when the shit hits the fan and it turns into a fight, I will fucking dominate this guy every step of the way. When it turns into when he's a little bit tired and he has to dig down, it's over. It's all over.
But, all of that being said, the lightweight champion still claims that he doesn't care if it's McGregor or somebody else for his next outing:
I'm the champion. I have the title. People want what I have. I'm not begging for anything from anybody. If this guy wants this title, he can come get it.
If the pair do face off - be it at UFC 205 or otherwise - there could be more than bottles thrown at the final press conference.
You can watch the full interview here:
