The Notorious Conor McGregor was a UFC fighter from Dublin, Ireland, who fought with a counter striker fighting style. He unofficially retired with a record of 22-6, after he broke his leg when his leg was trapped during a set back which led to a severe fracture to the tibia and on the fibula. Many people think McGregor was better at being a fighter than he was a marketer, but there is a lot of evidence that proves otherwise.
McGregor became was the UFC’s first fighter to be a double champion, with his fight with Jose “Junior” Aldo. Aldo was a star in the WEC, and the UFC with wins against the greats of his time like Urijah Faber, Chad Mendes and Frankie Edger. Aldo had not lost in 10 years before and was on a 18 fight win streak before McGregor and was champion of the featherweight division. The fight was on UFC 178 on December 12, 2015. McGregor ended up knocking Jose Aldo out in 13 seconds and it is still the fastest championship finish. The video went viral and attained 8.3 million views. The insanely short fight put the uneducated world on notice about martial arts, the UFC, and the man known as Conor McGregor.
McGregor has had an amazing job selling Pay-Per-View (PPV) by his trash talk. Eight out of ten of the most sold PPV events in UFC history are fights that McGregor was headlining. This was made possible by the fireworks that went off before the fights even began. During the pre-fight conference of the Nate Diaz fight, McGregor talked about Nate’s brother, how Diaz is brain dead, and how Diaz was only fighting to pay for bills. When it came to Khabib Nurmagomedov he wasn’t much nicer. McGregor yelled to the people about how Nurmagomedov used Vladimir Putin to arrest people he didn’t like, how bad both his religion and his homeland of Dagestan are. That enraged the Russian and Muslim people, who then wanted to see McGregor lose at any cost. The amount of people from around the world that hated either one of them led to UFC 229, which made $86.4 million and made it the most watched fight in MMA history.
McGregor has had some of the best rivalries in MMA history. The most famous one was Nurmagomedov that had the best trash talk by McGregor he has ever had. Even after the fight Nurmagomedov got in a fight with McGregor’s team, and he ended up going to jail. Another great one was with Diaz. The first fight was a submission by Diaz, but McGregor also did amazing, so a second fight was guaranteed less than 2 months later. The second fight was an even tougher match that lead to a split decision with McGregor winning, although many people think Diaz won. It made a lot of the community wanting another rematch, but the company didn’t allow it. It is estimated the first fight made $78-90 million and the second fight estimating $99-106 million, a total of $138-196 million just on those two fights alone. So, was it what was happening in the ring that made the revenue, or was it what happened before either fighter set foot inside it?
Conor McGregor was a better advertiser than he was a fighter because of his ability to cross over to other weight classes, sell PPV events, and creating great rivalries that made the company around $600 million for the company and $39.5 million for himself. Undoubtedly, every sport should have a Conor McGregor.
