Fight Club: Conor McGregor backs up hype as UFC 189 delivers big

Daniel Eldridge 09:56 13/07/2015
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  • Conor McGregor spent most of the opening two rounds on the back foot before finding the KO against Chad Mendes.

    When UFC 189’s card was released, it was immediately hyped as the card of the year largely at the strength of drawing power for two men – Conor McGregor and Jose Aldo. 

    McGregor, the brash trash talker extraordinaire and emerging KO artist and Aldo, the only Featherweight champion the UFC has ever known.  A funny thing happened, though, when depending on who you believe Jose Aldo either broke his rib (according to Aldo’s camp) or lied about breaking his rib and sent an old X-Ray to Dana White and really just bruised his rib (according to White). 

    Aldo’s replacement, Chad Mendes, had only two weeks to prepare, and had to deal with a short training camp for the fight of his life. Despite the UFC fans unhappiness of not seeing the champ in action, UFC 189 lived up to and exceeded the hype. The one question many UFC fans had was how McGregor would deal with the threat of a takedown from an elite wrestler. Enter Mendes. 

    Mendes is the best wrestler in the Featherweight division and for the better part of two rounds he established that with his four completed takedowns. 

    When the two fighters were standing in the pocket, McGregor would pick apart his foe at distance, hitting him with myriad strikes. But Mendes’ ability to close the distance, land strikes in range and successfully complete takedowns scores him points. 

     In fact, McGregor lost the first round on all three scorecards and perhaps was seconds away from going down 2-0 in the five-round fight when Mendes made a crucial mistake.  

    He went for a topside guillotine choke and in the ensuing scramble McGregor rolled to his knees and escaped to his feet. Uh-oh.

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    McGregor unleashed a barrage of uppercuts, body kicks and a vicious left cross, leaving Mendes to turtle up on the ground as the Irishman landed several more strikes before referee Herb Dean called the bout with three seconds remaining in round two. From the UFC’s point of view, it was the best possible scenario that could have unfolded. 

    McGregor furthered his legend status by knocking out the top challenger in the division, and grabbing gold around his waist. 
    Due to his entertaining trash talk and extremely advanced skills, the massively popular Dubliner is going to go through the roof now that he has a title.  

    As much as the UFC paid for promos in the build up to this fight, it’s going to look like an extremely smart investment  in the next few months as the hype builds between Aldo and McGregor.

    The new interim featherweight champ wasted no time in doing his bit immediately after the fight. “When Jose pulled out and didn’t mention nothing about the fans, and starts supporting Chad like weird little buddies, that left a bad, bad taste in my mouth,” McGregor said. “I couldn’t do that. I showed up. I respect the people who sacrificed their money and their time.

    “I don’t think he deserves to be spoken about here. He didn’t show up. This was the event that we built, and he should have made that walk. I thank Chad for making that walk, for showing up, but in my opinion Jose is done. If it comes around, we’ll discuss it then, but right now this is my night.”

    On a great night for the UFC, the undercard served up as much drama and entertainment as the late fights. Two of the first three early bouts saw flying knee knockouts, which you’re lucky to see a handful of a year.

    First, Brazilian prospect Thomas Almeida came back to defeat Brad Pickett after being dropped with punches from the British veteran. 

    Not to be outdone, Jeremy Stephens landed a picture perfect flying knee on Dennis Bermudez. Sandwiched in between, Gunnar Nelson submitted striking specialist Brandon Thatch with a first round rear-naked choke. 

    And on the headliner for the prelims, Matt Brown returned to action with a violent win over Tim Means, submitting the former King of the Cage champion.

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