The thing about Conor McGregor is…



Wait, wait. Before we get into that, here’s the thing in general: You hang around the fight game long enough and you grow accustomed to getting lied to. In fact, you develop a taste for it -- you begin to categorize lies based on efficiency and clarity of purpose, like a connoisseur. There are more agendas, more self-serving narratives, more scales of exaggeration in play than can ever be meaningful. There’s a reason people say, "and here we are, at the moment of truth!" when fighters touch gloves, you know what I mean?



It’s because we’ve finally arrived at that moment from a place of total B.S.



And so here’s the thing about Conor McGregor, and fighters like him…it’s our gullibility that is always at stake. That’s what’s fun. We know we’re either being fools to believe in him (like he believes in him), or we think we’re too smart to fall for that. In any case, that’s a good dynamic, having your powers of perception played with so freely. That’s why people seek to monetize their hunches through gambling.



And these are the things that make a fight like the main event on Saturday night seem personal.



Still, even the most ridiculous romantic fool couldn’t have scripted McGregor’s moment at UFC 189. Even if he was dismissing accomplished real life human beings as mere obstacles, it only made the interrogation lights beaming down on him that much hotter when he stepped in with The Wrestler, Chad Mendes. Mendes was either just a random anyman standing in for Jose Aldo on short notice, as McGregor insisted, or he was in fact the McGregor antidote. Mendes, a terror for everyone except Aldo (and even for Aldo), had never been cast like that before. He’s never been positioned strictly as a weathervane for another man’s fortune.



Yet he was a wrestler, an insistent wrestler, exactly the kind of wrestler people assumed McGregor was being protected against hitherto. The set-up alone felt like…a set-up. Three thousand Irish flew in not to see their man ground into meal, but to see "Mystic Mac" rise to the occasion.



Really, the thing couldn’t have played out more perfectly for McGregor or his countrymen (or the UFC, who should be handing out champagne splits this morning). He came back to win a fight he was losing, in a way that -- for all intents and purposes -- communicated his power of belief. That’s one hell of a trick. Especially in the spot he was in.



McGregor spent large portions of two rounds on his back, trying to dislodge Mendes’ driving head from his chest cavity. As the Irish chanted "Ole, Ole, Ole!" McGregor was just about to be down two rounds to none when he popped out of a guillotine attempt and stood. From there it’s all an old wives’ tale that just happens to be true.



As McGregor got to his feet, he advanced towards Mendes with a look that said, "now what?" It was in that sequence where everything that goes into McGregor as a hype product became something actual. Just like that, there was the old ghost materializing in the chamber, spooking a disbelieving man into a paler pigment. Yet McGregor materialized in front of millions. McGregor took the faded Mendes apart with his fists on the fence and with three seconds left in a fight of extraordinary value, stuffed his mythos full of substance.



Now we have the UFC’s biggest star. His fight with Aldo, which was already going to be of massive interest, just became potentially the biggest fight in UFC history. Perfect, too, because all the naysayers will stay intact. Naysayers are as vital to the sport as its blind proponents.



Mendes had two weeks of camp to prepare for the fight, half of which he spent as a contingency plan. He gassed early as a result. He game-planned on the fly. Still, the question remains for McGregor with dogged wrestlers, because look what a non-peak Mendes was doing while he was doing it. Mendes made a mistake.

It’s all legitimate. Just as it’s all moot on Sunday morning, as McGregor wakes up with a belt.



For him it’s a quick stop at the bank on his way to the next moment of truth.