Opinion: The Dangerous Mind Games of Conor McGregor

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UFC 229 is now available on Amazon Prime.

Conor McGregor is at it again. He keeps on playing those mind games forever, pushing the barriers, planting seeds. Can you blame him? As a tactic, it’s tried and tested. As Sun Tzu once said, the supreme art of war is to defeat your enemy without fighting. Conor has excelled in this department, antagonizing opponents to the breaking point, where they forget the game plan and focus on just trying to take the Irishman’s head clean off his shoulders. We saw Jose Aldo, normally a cerebral assassin, run angry into a counter left in 10 seconds. Eddie Alvarez spent two years telling the world how easy his game plan would be to execute, and then tried to stand and bang until he was knocked out.

McGregor’s ability to elicit this response time and again is nothing short of genius, as he methodically makes seasoned pros rise to the bait; pioneering the role of psychological warfare as its own art form within MMA. Khabib Nurmagomedov is a different kind of fish though. His stoic demeanor has remained constant and calm throughout the McGregor maelstrom. Some cracks did appear though as he tried to trade barbs with McGregor at the UFC 229 presser. Nurmagomedov is an intensely proud man, and it was inevitable that he would respond in some way to the vitriolic taunts that were thrown in his direction, as McGregor escalated his smack talk to an unforeseen and unprecedented level. Khabib himself wasn’t the only one targeted, with his brother, his father and his manager all subjected to various insults. As McGregor deployed a calculated Machiavellian gambit to extract a response from an otherwise robotic opponent, Nurmagomedov tried to maintain his aura of calm confidence; but who can say what is bubbling under the surface?

Nurmagomedov may feel that actions speak louder than words, but let’s not forget that this isn’t just a typical case of sticks and stones. McGregor cast the first one in the parking lot in New York, and while words might not hurt you, a 10-kilogram dolly as a projectile will. The visceral nature of the confrontation irreversibly changed the context of this fight. While talk may be cheap, make no mistake that this is now personal. They say love is a flower, and you’ve got to let it grow. But hatred grows its own deep roots, and Nurmagomedov is undeniably emotionally involved. It will be intriguing to learn whether that emotion motivates or controls him once the Octagon door closes on Saturday. The risks extend beyond his focus and falling into McGregor’s game. If McGregor is under his skin, the urge to scratch that itch will be dangerous, as an adrenaline dump will make him a slow moving target for left hand missiles.

However, it is not just Nurmagomedov’s mental state on which we should be speculating. McGregor is indeed a mind guerrilla, but observers would comment that he himself has not been in the best mental state recently. McGregor has always been a showman, who would have you believe that he is bigger than Jesus, but his actions outside the Octagon have grown closer and closer to the persona he portrays. From his in-ring confrontation with referee Mark Goddard to alleged run-ins with Irish mobsters, rumors of out-of-control partying and viral social media videos, then flying a posse to New York to have a showdown with Nurmagomedov two days before UFC 223, where he was scheduled to fight for the title of which McGregor had been stripped, his increasingly erratic behaviour made us consider whether the wheels were coming off. With no end in sight, were we watching another star turn supernova?

With these events in recent memory, it’s hard to disconnect them from the tone which McGregor has adopted in the lead up to this fight. Instead of humor or the arrogant quips we have become accustomed to, he has spoken with raw naked aggression, and not a hint of his usual charisma or polished showmanship. We find ourselves asking, is this a man struggling to stay in control, or are the angry tirades masking his own anxiety about the fight? Nurmagomedov is undeniably a daunting proposition to compete against. A signature aspect of McGregor’s success has been his ability to keep calm while his opponents became flustered, but he has seemed anything but relaxed recently.

Perhaps, having delivered hyperbole for so long, it is all he knows at this point. Deviating from what brings you success can be incredibly difficult, but where a man who is used to acting in one way never changes; he will come to ruin when the times are no longer in harmony with his ways. One size certainly does not fit all and it may well be that Nurmagomedov is the antithesis of McGregor’s coordinated volatility. Their personality clash is just one of the fascinating dualities surrounding this fight. There are millions of fans who are emotionally involved in this contest, and we’re only watching from afar. I hope on Saturday you’ll join us, and the fight world will be as one.

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