If it's possible to leave aside for a moment the questionable history in relation to drug testing and the employment contracts for fighters, then the UFC is an extremely modern machine. Never has a sport cultivated new media as well as it has. It is a relentless content machine, with more than 100,000 people willing to watch a live stream of the post-UFC 196 press conference.
It is a sport that can largely be digested from tweet to tweet. Such is its modernity, it seems strange to ascribe the sport as old and hackneyed a phrase as "history being written by the winners", as many would argue that the only history a promotion company can deal with is its consigning of inadequate fighters to obscurity.
Nonetheless, Conor McGregor has dedicated his career to doing exactly that, rising from drawing the dole in Dublin to having the MMA world at his feet. McGregor's career rise has been meteoric.
Having been signed by Dana White following a trip to Dublin - allegedly without White having seen him fight at all - only last week Joe Rogan was claiming that McGregor was capable of sweeping all before him in the welterweight division while Frankie Edgar cried acrimony in terms of an acronym, complaining that the "C in UFC stands for Conor".
McGregor floored the featherweight world champion within 13 seconds, and promptly declared that he would become the first man in UFC history to hold belts at two different weight divisions simultaneously. So powerful was McGregor's position, rumours circulated in January that McGregor felt financially stifled by the UFC and wished to start selling his own fights, Floyd Mayweather style, rather than being beholden to the negotiations made by Dana White and Lorenzo Fertitta.
Today, Conor McGregor is currently coming to terms with his first UFC defeat, as Nate Diaz cut off the oxygen to his seemingly uninhibited progress through the ranks of 'the company'. Diaz withstood a barrage of left-hand blows from McGregor with an adamantine chin and eventually forced the Dubliner into tapping out from a vice-like choke hold.
Diaz withstood a barrage of left-hand blows from McGregor with an adamantine chin and eventually forced the Dubliner into tapping out from a vice-like choke hold.
It is an astonishingly abrupt halt to McGregor's momentum.
McGregor has admitted that he gambled on making the step up to welterweight, saying that Diaz could handle punches that a featherweight could not, so it appears McGregor has been hoisted by his ambition to "take over" the division by making the jump in weight too soon.
McGregor's career now resembles as something from the typical three-act, 'rise and fall' playbook.
In simplistic terms, he has gone from drawing the dole in Dublin to revelling at a sport at his feet, and become intoxicated with such a meteoric rise and been dethroned through solipsistic delusion.
A defeat is the threshold at which 'self-confidence' morphs into "arrogance", with McGregor's triumphant predictions that he would suffocate Diaz as a Boa Constrictor would crush a limp Gazelle ringing lamentably hollow as his neck disappeared in Diaz' bulging bicep.
Diaz' sheer power in victory has wrought McGregor's third act. The natural reaction has been to highlight the fallen's vices...
fat skinny gazelle on ten days' notice... oh this is excruciating... have to stay up for the press conference now
— Ken Early (@kenearlys) March 6, 2016
...and hypocrisies:
just a fact that holm passed out while mcgregor tapped. not trolling. on tapping, last yr he told @MySecondEmpire : pic.twitter.com/pkAluSNZEQ
— Ken Early (@kenearlys) March 6, 2016
And in true 'fallen giant' style, McGregor has admitted that he was ultimately hoisted by his own ambition, admitting that the step-up in weight saw Diaz withstand punches that would floor a featherweight.
The third act in a three-act play necessitates an end, as Vincent Hogan lyrically foretold in yesterday's Irish Independent:
But the moment he's beaten, the moment a fist, a kick, or a choke-hold gets the better of him, this magic show will end.
Because the market is for 'The Notorious', for a concept of invincibility. Lose and that turns, instantly, to dust.
Then and only then, the zoo keys handed over, we might get to see behind the mask and come to know who this man Conor McGregor actually is.
Yet with McGregor there will be a fourth act. The UFC need to sell pay per view packages for a featherweight clash for UFC 200. McGregor is simply too marketable to fade away. McGregor will return to featherweight and defend his title against either Jose Aldo or Frankie Edgar.
The step down in weight will suit McGregor, and he will likely defend his title and begin ascending the weight divisions once again. We may even see a McGregor/Diaz and Holm/Tate repeat card in December.
McGregor is beaten, but the show must go on.
Becuase economics always demand a sequel.
See Also: Dana White Has Seriously Changed His Tune On Conor McGregor's UFC Future
