Conor McGregor: Is He More than Just a Big Mouth?
By Barnaby Kellaway
As mixed martial arts continues to evolve it’s becoming increasingly apparent that fighters are rewarded for making their voices heard. More than ever before athletes are making a conscious effort to use ‘trash talking’ as a tool to further their career.
There is one man in the UFC today who exemplifies the mindset that so many are trying to replicate, Conor McGregor. Whilst the Irishman is undeniably an elite fighter with immense skill there is no way he’d have ascended the featherweight division in such a short period of time without that blarney-stone tongue of his.
In just two years with the UFC and after defeating only two top ten ranked opponents, what McGregor has achieved is staggering. He has become one of the company’s very top earners: at UFC 178 he earned $200,000, considerably more than fifteen fight UFC veteran and co-main event fighter Donald Cerrone (who was fighting above him on the card). Since then, to many people’s annoyance, he’s received a title shot. To top it all off, UFC president Dana White has compared him to two of the biggest stars in MMA history, Brock Lesnar and Georges St Pierre. Oh and there’s a documentary about him.
MMA has never seen a rise to the top like it before. From telling Chad Mendes ‘I could rest my balls on your forehead’ to jumping out of the cage and confronting the champion, Jose Aldo, McGregor has made every right move, in and out of the cage, to get to the top.
The Irishman is not the first man to self promote with success, Chael Sonnen, a good fighter who earned more big fights and more money than almost anyone else at the time, came before. Despite a limited skill set he too was eloquent and funny and he used these skills to get two title shots.
Sonnen had this to say about McGregor, ‘Some of these guys just don’t understand it, and what Conor McGregor is more than he’s a great trash talker, he’s a great entertainer’.
The former middleweight contender was alluding to the fact that many fighters still haven’t accepted the reality that self promotion is a huge part of being a fighter. Flyweight champion Demetrious Johnson is one of them. Out of the cage DJ is mild mannered and low-key. Whilst these are admirable character traits, they don’t suit the fight game too well. Despite being perhaps the most technically sound fighter in MMA, he fails to pull big PPV numbers and doesn’t draw as much attention as any other champion.
If DJ were to begin calling opponents out and staking his claim as the best pound for pound fighter in the world, which could be argued, then his employers would surely reward him for doing so. Whilst the UFC can’t encourage controversial behaviour they can certainly profit from it.
In the lead up to UFC 182 we were witness to one of the biggest media drives from the company in recent memory with the ‘Bad Blood’ campaign. During this push there were a number of adverts for the event which showed the highly unprofessional pushing match between Jones and Cormier in the MGM lobby as well as leaked footage of Jones threatening to kill DC. The content of these videos portrayed the UFC’s number one ranked fighter as a thug: not the best business move you might have thought…
However, that event did the best PPV numbers in over a year and Jones took home half a million. Quite clearly, controversy pays.
Though all this may be true it’s clear that some athletes aren’t cut out for ten hour media days and fabricated hatred. We’re never going to see buttoned up army veteran Tim Kennedy karate chop his opponent in the neck during a face off and that’s okay.
But what these less media savvy fighters must understand is that if they’re not getting the attention they think they deserve then it’s probably because they’re not making enough noise.
