In just a few days, Conor McGregor will fight Jose Aldo. It's finally happening.

McGregor's mouth got him to the title shot, but it will be his considerable abilities that allow him to compete with the best featherweight ever to step foot in the Octagon. If The Notorious hopes to dethrone the only man to ever wear the UFC featherweight belt, then he'll need a strategy that augments his strengths, mitigates his weaknesses, and exploits the flaws in Aldo's style.

The trouble with predicting this fight is that the usual parameters of gameplanning don't seem to apply. Yes, there are specific openings to be exploited for both men, but a sound strategy is typically much more than that. Most gameplans, you see, are about conditioning; they center on the idea of teaching the opponent what he is and is not safe to do. If he has an excellent jab, you punish it constantly in order to plant a seed of hesitation in his mind. If he likes to come forward, you push him backward, or you evade and let him stumble through open space. When the cornerstones of his approach begin to crack, other openings shortly appear.

But Aldo and McGregor are not normal men. McGregor claims to have lost his mind in pursuit of his craft, and he fights like it. Most fighters will slow down and gauge their attacks after being repeatedly countered and taken down. But when Chad Mendes spent two rounds hitting and tackling McGregor at every opportunity, McGregor simply upped his volume and got the knockout, same as always. He refused to respect his opponent's attempts to undermine his approach. Jose Aldo doesn't have the same exact kind of unhinged aggression, but there is a crazed determination within him as well. When the same Chad Mendes began to run away with the first round, Aldo suddenly flipped a switch and came storming after him, knocking him down with a beautiful counter left hook and sealing the frame. He gained a second knockdown just moments after surviving two of Mendes' hardest, most accurate punches.

There are many fighters that get going when the going gets tough; but when the going gets tough for Aldo and McGregor, they get crazy. How does one prepare for such a uniquely confident and dangerous opponent?

Well, as luck would have it, I think I've identified the three keys that, if achieved, will satisfy the terms of McGregor's self-imposed prophecy. This is how Conor McGregor beats Jose Aldo.

3. Kill the body

2. Overload the Computer

1. Attack on Diagonals

Let's break these points down, starting with the obvious.

3. KILL THE BODY

There are many reasons to attack the body in MMA, but few fighters do so with regularity. Conor McGregor is not one of these fighters, and a sustained body attack, of the kind he used to wear down Chad Mendes, will be incredibly useful against Aldo. Not only did McGregor tire out Mendes, who was already fighting on the back of a dramatically brief training camp, but his assault on Mendes' torso allowed him to control the range, pace, and whereabouts of the fight.

1. McGregor moves forward as Chad Mendes backs up into the fence.

2. He feints a right hook to bring Mendes' arms up . . .

3. . . . then sinks a wide left into Mendes' exposed torso.

4. Mendes manages to skirt his pursuer for a moment and return to open space.

5. So McGregor fires a long-range body kick at him.

6. Mendes evades, but only by stepping back, his back once again nearing the fence.

Body shots hurt and they tire the opponent out, but that's only one reason for throwing them. Like a stiff jab, the flash of pain is only a small part of the weapon's purpose.

Body strikes are also an indispensable tool for ring/cage control. Jose Aldo has superb head movement. And because it only takes a small motion of the hips and legs to move the head a great deal, this is an incredibly efficient method of defense for a fighter with a reputation for poor stamina. The torso is not so easy to move; in order to take the body out of the path of an attack, the feet have to move, which means a large, explosive movement. Far less efficient. Sweeping attacks are particularly effective, as they cannot be easily sidestepped. To avoid McGregor's kick in the sequence above, Mendes must back himself into the fence, or else check or block the strike, which can be just as exhausting as absorbing a blow outright.

A liberal body attack will allow McGregor to push Aldo backward, corral him into a relatively contained space, and slowly sap his energy, priming him for a knockout in the later rounds of the fight.

2. OVERLOAD THE COMPUTER

The major problem with fighting Jose Aldo (and there are very, very many) is his counter striking, and the defense that enables it. Aldo is very difficult to hit cleanly, and his willingness to plant his feet and counter means that he is even harder to hit twice in a row. As noted in the introduction, he also responds remarkably well to being hit, and hurt. Chad Mendes enjoyed considerable success in finding Aldo's head, but he struggled to defend himself at the same time, while Aldo was ready to respond whether or not he was successfully avoiding damage.

1. Aldo steps toward Mendes, pressuring him with his presence and waiting to counter.

2. Mendes reaches out to cover Aldo's left hand and cracks Aldo with a stiff jab.

3. Aldo rolls with the punch, touching Mendes with his right hand as he shifts his feet.

4. Mendes tries to find Aldo's head again, but Aldo is already stepping back and loading his weight into . . .

5. . . . a cracking left hook . . .

6. . . . that sends Mendes to the floor.

Aldo is a ferocious counter puncher (and kicker) who almost always uses his defense; he rarely slips a punch without at least looking for an opportunity to land one in return.

This isn't necessarily a good thing, however. Aldo is so willing to counter (and so caught up in the process of finding those counters) that he can lose track of the fight as a whole. More than that, he throws almost everything with full power, or something close to it (thanks to Bloody Elbow's Phil Mackenzie for wisely pointing this out). In my pre-UFC 179 gameplan for Chad Mendes, I said: "Whatever Mendes tries to do, Aldo will try to do it better, and the faster and more frequently he attempts to do it, the more quickly Aldo will tire himself out." Aldo did manage to foil Mendes' pressuring gambit thanks to his pinpoint accuracy and tremendous willpower, but there is no denying that he matched Mendes' pace, no matter how hard Mendes pushed. Had Aldo not knocked Mendes down twice in the first round, he may very well have found himself exhausted by the start of the third.

Just ten seconds before that knockdown, Aldo was seeking to reestablish his control of the fight after being knocked down himself for the first time in his career, and taking an egregious eye gouge from Mendes. Brimming with furious energy, this is how he responded to a low kick from Mendes.

1. Mendes steps forward . . .

2. . . . and lands a hard outside low kick.

3. Aldo immediately counters with a right hand, that Mendes frantically manages to parry.

4. A left hook clips the side of Mendes' ear . . .

5. . . . and another right hand misses as Mendes begins to step away.

6. Finally, Aldo throws himself off-balance with a whipping left hook that completely misses the mark.

Can you imagine a fighter swinging and missing like that for more than a single round? Or what if Mendes had even proven capable of absorbing Aldo's punches and walking through them? Is that the kind of frenetic energy expenditure that Aldo could really afford to maintain for the duration of a five round fight? Jose Aldo is amazing, but he's not a machine.

McGregor won't be able to take away Aldo's strengths outright, but he can convince Aldo to whittle away at his own reserves. To do this, McGregor will need volume, and not merely the kind he has become known for since debuting in the UFC. Rather than simply stepping and throwing power at Aldo, McGregor needs to feint, constantly. He needs to convincingly suggest attacks with both hands and both legs, moving his body, and even touching Aldo noncommittally in order to draw reactions out of him without putting himself in the line of fire. The more McGregor can get Aldo to counter, the better his chances of overwhelming him later on in the fight become. The more McGregor can get Aldo to miss, the more energy he wastes. And maybe, just maybe, after two or three rounds of this aimless swinging, he will get Jose Aldo to hesitate.

1. ATTACK ON DIAGONALS

So we've covered which targets to focus on, and how to open Aldo up to them, but we have yet to deal with the most pressing issue facing McGregor: how do you actually hit Jose Aldo?

McGregor has shown very few exploitable weaknesses during his UFC career, and he has proven too bold to let the most egregious ones bother him (it takes a confident man to walk through Chad Mendes' punches and ask for more). Something he has never quite managed to correct, however, is his tendency to attack in straight lines. Though often lauded for his pressuring footwork, the truth is that McGregor isn't a flawless cage cutter. His problem is that he tends to either cut off the cage, or move in to attack--he has a few favorite workarounds, but he struggles to do both at once.

1. Max Holloway feints and measures with his left hand.

2. A quick flashing jab doesn't quite find the mark . . .

3. . . . but Holloway takes advantage of McGregor's momentary hesitation to move laterally.

4. McGregor side steps, keeping himself between Holloway and the center of the cage.

5. Attempting a lead uppercut, however, McGregor comes straight forward.

6. Holloway dodges the uppercut and takes a scuffing body shot . . .

7. . . . but he suddenly finds himself nearer to the center of the cage than McGregor, with a possible angle of attack.

8. Maybe not the wisest choice, but Holloway takes advantage of the opportunity to tap the back of McGregor's head with a cheeky wheel kick.

Note how McGregor approaches the tasks of attacking and cutting off the Octagon differently. He seems to treat his lateral movement as a reset between attacks, keeping himself in the middle of the opponent's escape route, but not threatening as he does so. Once he begins throwing, he starts to follow his opponent around rather than cutting him off. What he lacks is diagonal movement. Were McGregor to move forward and sideways at the same time, he would be able to intercept his quarry's lateral movement while moving in to strike. His opponents would have serious difficulty staying out of harm's way--even more than they already do, that is.

The body shots mentioned in Key Three are one of McGregor's go-to workarounds. He doesn't need to intercept an opponent if he can let them walk into a sweeping kick or wide left hand, such as the one he attempts to land in Frame Six above. His inside angle left hand is another. Thanks to his long arms, McGregor is able to punch across his own body without sacrificing too much reach, allowing him to catch escaping opponents with their feet out of position, without actually have to adjust his own feet prior to the attack. Without the footwork to complement them, however, these tactics are merely compromises for a part of McGregor's game that has yet to be developed. They have worked well for him so far but--it goes without saying--McGregor has never faced a fighter like Jose Aldo.

Max Holloway has improved a great deal since his fight with McGregor, but he's still no Jose Aldo. The featherweight champion may very well have the best footwork in all of MMA. In fact, he is one of the very few mixed martial artists, even at the elite level, who seems to really know what a proper pivot looks like, and he uses them constantly to defend himself and enhance his counter punching. Take a look at this effortless pivot Aldo executed against Kenny Florian.

1. Aldo stoically pressures Florian.

2. Florian steps forward with a feint, looking to back Aldo up.

3. Instead, Aldo takes a small diagonal step with his left foot . . .

4. . . . and swings his right foot around, repositioning his entire body at a right angle to Florian, whose attempted hook goes wide.

5. Aldo immediately smashes Florian's nose with a straight right hand while he struggles to readjust.

That's what a pivot looks like. Notice that Aldo doesn't move away from Florian, which might have allowed Kenny's right hook to land. Nor does he compromise his own balance with an overly dramatic turn. He simply steps, turns his foot, and then adjusts his back leg, casually taking a new position. And as always, he is more than ready to capitalize on his openings once he has defended his opponent's lead.

It is an incredibly efficient movement, and one that McGregor has never seen before. Conor is used to opponents taking large, bounding side steps along the perimeter of the cage. Dennis Siver, Dustin Poirier, Chad Mendes--none of these men has ever actually executed a tight pivot when McGregor steps in; none of them has maintained critical striking distance while avoiding McGregor's assault.

Aldo is an opponent who can escape and attack simultaneously. Unless McGregor can simultaneously attack and prevent escape, he will find himself out-positioned and out-struck.

There has never been a featherweight contest like Aldo-McGregor. Few fights in the history of MMA compare, regardless of weight class. In many ways, this is the Emelianenko-Cro Cop of the modern MMA era. A destroyer versus a consummate veteran. A knockout artist versus a well-rounded expert. With thudding power in his left hand, McGregor could get the win at any moment, whether or not he executes an intelligent strategy--but it would not be wise to gamble against Jose Aldo, who has forgotten more tricks than most of McGregor's past opponents will ever learn.

For more on Jose Aldo vs Conor McGregor, as well as Frankie Edgar vs Chad Mendes and Max Holloway vs Jeremy Stephens, both of which also take place this weekend, check out the latest episode of Heavy Hands, the only podcast dedicated to the finer points of face-punching.