Until now the MGM Grand in Las Vegas has always been synonymous with boxing, but if Conor McGregor can defeat Nate Diaz there in their welterweight bout at UFC 196 on Saturday, its transition to an MMA mecca will continue to gather pace.
That conversion is thanks in no small part to McGregor, whose three previous visits to Nevada have all worked out in his favour.
“I really, really enjoy Vegas. I’ve buried three bodies clean out here. Saturday night will be a fourth body,” he told a press conference ahead of his welterweight showdown with Diaz.
“I enjoy Vegas. Vegas is good to me.”
The opposite is also true – with no characters of McGregor’s calibre in recent years, the world of professional boxing has stagnated, and the MGM are only too happy to let McGregor and the UFC fill the gap.
As ever, the 27-year-old Irishman will not wait modestly in the wings, saying that he would go up and rip down the banner featuring Floyd Mayweather’s image that adorns the façade of the MGM Grand so that they can replace it with one of him.
“I know the people in the MGM are singing, singing all the way to the bank,” he said. “Maybe I should be, maybe they should take out that lion statue [in the lobby] and put in an Irish lion.”
While Diaz, who stepped in when McGregor’s planned opponent at lightweight, Rafael dos Anjos, pulled out of their title bout with a foot injury, mumbled his way through short, clipped answers to most of the few questions that were posed to him.
In contrast, McGregor, who steps up two weight divisions to meet Diaz, enjoyed the cut and thrust with the media, and even showed some seldom-seen humility as he was compared to Muhammad Ali.
“For me, Muhammad Ali was probably my first combat sports star that I looked up to. I had never seen anything like that and I was fascinated by him growing up.
“It’s a comparison that has been thrown at me a few times but I cannot accept a comparison like that. Muhammad Ali is a special man. He done things that are unthinkable. He changed culture, period. I’m honoured to be put in that bracket by some people.”
Mangled metaphor
Despite his reputation as a fast talker, McGregor has a long way to go to reach the level of wit, intelligence and eloquence of Muhammad Ali. He lacks the fluency of the great heavyweight champion, and occasionally gets lost in a mangled metaphor. Luckily for him, no-one else in the current crop of high-profile combat sports athletes is anywhere close to Ali’s class either.
Uncomfortable as he is with the microphone in his hand, Diaz will be glad the talking is now over, and his combination of powerful striking and jiu jitsu skills will provide a tough test for McGregor.
McGregor’s coach John Kavanagh believes that the Californian might try to lock him up to negate the Irishman’s superior foot speed and agility, and to avoid going toe to toe and exchanging blows.
“He might turn into a grappler when he meets Conor. Most of them do,” he said earlier in the week.
Though not in the same class in terms of jiu jitsu as Diaz, McGregor is no slouch himself on the mat. Even though he has confidently predicted that he will end the fight in the first, he would undoubtedly prefer it if the two fighters remain standing for as long as possible over the five five-minute rounds.
If McGregor does knock Diaz out in the first it will only burnish the legend of “Mystic Mac” and move him a few steps closer to his stated aim of seeing UFC generate a billion dollars in revenue this year on the back of his efforts.
“2015 was its biggest year. Who was 2015? That was everything got to do with me.”
Title shot
The result against Diaz will go a long way to determining whether McGregor's next title shot at UFC 200 will be against Dos Anjos (if he recovers in time) for the lightweight title, or Robbie Lawler for the welterweight belt.
Barring injury, McGregor will be back at the MGM on July 9th for UFC 200. Boxing may well be what built the reputation of the MGM as a sporting venue, but it is McGregor and the UFC that are building its future.
