Roundtable: Which Conor McGregor feud is the greatest?

In a business that’s frequently bolstered by bad blood, few fighters have been able to get it pumping like Conor McGregor.

Just look at all the box office receipts “Notorious” has earned during his tenure with UFC, and it will be obvious that his promotion tactics are futile. McGregor’s name will be on every marquee and it’s guaranteed to bring you results. You’ll soon be able to live with your wealth like Scrooge McDuck if you match him against someone with genuine animosity.

Despite his few in-cage appearances over the years being, let’s just say, rare, McGregor is still the most popular fighter in MMA. He also remains one of the sport’s most consistent line steppers. Take his recent Twitter feud with Rafael Fiziev, for example, which stemmed from a seemingly innocuous exchange and rapidly escalated into another classic McGregor meltdown.

While Fiziev talk is unlikely to stop, McGregor has had a lot of high-profile fights in the Octagon, which have been regarded as some the greatest UFC events. Today’s question is: Which one was your favorite?

For the purpose of this discussion we are leaving the “best” and “greatest” definitions ambiguous. What about the biggest feud? The best fight? The most heated build? The one that is most likely to stand the test of time?

Leave it to the MMA Fighting crew of Alexander K. Lee, Shaun Al-Shatti, Damon Martin, and Jed Meshew to sort this one out, and leave your own thoughts on the topic in the comments below.

Esther Lin, MMA Fighting

vs. Khabib Nurmagomedov

Lee: Sometimes the most obvious choice is the right choice. Khabib Nurmagomedov was the one who drew McGregor’s ire the most. The reverse is also true. When you consider how respectful “The Eagle” was with most of his opponents, that’s one reason why this rivalry is particularly spectacular.

Perhaps “ugly” would be a better word to use here, because as much money as Conor vs. Khabib eventually generated for the UFC, it also provided several moments that were equal parts memorable and regrettable.

Who could forget the infamous dolly throw in the bowels of Barclays Center? McGregor wasn’t even supposed to be in Brooklyn, but a run-in between Nurmagomedov’s crew and McGregor BFF Artem Lobov forced the Irish star’s hand. He gathered up a posse, hopped on a private jet to fly from Ireland to New York, and then went absolutely nuts on a bus that was transporting Nurmagomedov and others. McGregor shattered a bus window with a dolly, injured Michael Chiesa and Ray Borg, caused then-strawweight champion Rose Namajunas to suffer mental trauma ahead of her title defense at UFC 223, and somehow didn’t get himself any serious reprimand from the UFC.

It escalated from here! McGregor took some gross shots at the customs of Nurmagomedov’s religion at the press conference for their fight and on social media, and Nurmagomedov accused McGregor of being an alcoholic. McGregor said :

for anyone who thought the prefight talk was a joke.

F*** peace. Here there will not be peace. It was always my belief that peace should be your goal. But if peace is not possible, then aim at the middle. That’s all. This is it. Never, ever, ever over.

He wasn’t lying.

Their fight at UFC 229 mostly went as expected. McGregor was a great champion, but Nurmagomedov was considered the ideal foil. McGregor was submitted in the fourth round by Nurmagomedov, despite his fame. Nurmagomedov should have felt satisfied, but he flew off the cage wall in an abrasive attack on McGregor’s cornerman Dillon Danis. This sparked one of the most vile (and I’m using that again) company incidents. Fines and suspensions were handed down, but no amends were made and the bad blood simmers to this day.

Of all McGregor’s feuds this was the one that escalated to real-life violence. This went beyond the point of promotion and deep-seated hate. It probably would have made for an unbelievably lucrative series of fights, too, if McGregor could keep his s*** together.

Instead, we got just the one, and considering everything that happened around it, it was more than enough.

Photo by Sportsfile/Corbis/Sportsfile via Getty Images

vs. Jose Aldo

Al-Shatti: The feud that started it all. This will always be the right answer and everyone who was around in those early years of life will know why.

McGregor’s rise to superstardom was the Jose Aldo rivalry. From the moment he put pen to paper with the UFC in early 2013, his single-minded pursuit of the greatest featherweight champion the sport had ever known was all-encompassing. It defined him. And it was a promotional masterclass in every sense of the word. From Brimage to Holloway to Brandao to Poirier to Siver, McGregor never strayed off message: He’d come to slay the boogeyman of 145 pounds.

His brash overconfidence was the perfect foil for Aldo’s steely grandeur — and when he finally landed the fight at UFC 189, the UFC went all-in, launching the pair on a 12-day press tour that was unprecedented in MMA for its time. Aldo was born in Rio de Janeiro, and the event ended with McGregor’s Dublin fans in chaos. Each day brought new adventures. Every stop served as hype building exercise, to increase tensions. McGregor threw darts at Aldo’s photo in Rio, while Aldo sat on a Rio stool, his needling for an all-time greatest. It was spectacular.

When disaster struck and Aldo dropped out of UFC 189 with an untimely injury, McGregor persevered to beat Chad Mendes on short notice and capture an interim belt in the greatest UFC pay-per-view of all-time, and the rivalry exploded into overdrive. Suddenly, the two men were on equal footing — and it infuriated Aldo, as did McGregor’s constant insults about his withdrawal.

By the time UFC 194 finally arrived in December 2015, it felt as if Las Vegas was the center of the whole damn world. It was unlike anything MMA had seen before, and in many ways, the fight itself undersold the splendor of the moment — after nearly 33 months of promotional perfection, McGregor’s 13-second knockout almost felt anticlimactic. It was the fight that launched Aldo and McGregor into the global spotlight. The UFC has never been able to replicate the moment.

Esther Lin, MMA Fighting

vs. Nate Diaz

Martin: It’s difficult to imagine that McGregor’s greatest rivalry came because of an injured foot, but that’s exactly how he ended up fighting Nate Diaz for the first time at UFC 196.

McGregor had been scheduled to fight Rafael dos Anjos in the UFC lightweight title bout. However, McGregor suffered an injury during training that rendered him unfit to continue. McGregor needed to be replaced by a different opponent. This was when Diaz realized all his dreams. He had been targeting McGregor for months, including his post-fight speech in which he said “Conor McGregor! You’re taking everything that I worked for!”

As though he would have it come into being, Diaz was called when dos Anjos could not compete and the rest is history.

McGregor fought Diaz in an explosive press conference in promotion of the event. Security was on high alert the whole time, waiting patiently for Diaz to unleash a fight on the stage. The back-and-forth got ugly, but the real fight didn’t begin until they actually set foot in the cage together with McGregor coming out of the gate firing right away.

He bloodied Diaz early and it looked like another signature performance from McGregor, who had quickly become the UFC’s most prolific draw. Things started to change in round 2.

McGregor slowed down and Diaz began tagging him with punches. The damage started to mount so much that McGregor was running out of gas, and he dove for a takedown, which ultimately spelled his doom after Diaz stuffed the wrestling attempt and secured a fight-ending rear-naked choke.

It was a shocking result, because up to that point in his UFC career, McGregor had looked unbeatable, but Diaz had dispatched him in less than two rounds. That fight only ignited an even bigger war with McGregor demanding an immediate rematch. His request was eventually granted, and the second fight against Diaz was booked for UFC 202 just five months later.

Another press conference was held, but this time Diaz arrived and McGregor could not be bothered. When McGregor finally arrived, Diaz was already irritated and soon headed for the door, but not before he tossed a water bottle back at the dais.

McGregor immediately got up and began to launch full-sized soda cans and bottles back towards Diaz and his colleagues. It got really ugly — I can personally attest to this, as a water bottle went zinging about a foot over my head at one point thanks to my close proximity to coach John Kavanagh at the press conference. UFC President Dana White gave up trying to restore order after the situation became so chaotic that she ended her press conference.

The rematch a couple of nights later ended up an all-time classic with McGregor and Diaz beating the living hell out of each other for 25 consecutive minutes. McGregor landed several knockdowns, but he just couldn’t put Diaz away. In return, Diaz came back at McGregor with a relentless pace and overwhelming volume that nearly became too much to handle.

McGregor managed to survive and won a majority verdict on the scorecards. He then gave one of the best post-fight speeches ever, declaring “surprise surprise, m The king is back !”

.”

The series between McGregor and Diaz was tied at one win apiece, but that certainly didn’t end the rivalry because despite the last fight taking place in 2016, it’s rare that a few months go by without one of them addressing the other on social media. The fight world has been clamoring for another showdown between McGregor and Diaz ever since the rematch ended, which only speaks further to the impact those two bouts had over a relatively short period six years ago.

Despite no title being on the line, the stakes never felt higher than when McGregor and Diaz were in close proximity to each other and that proves just how much this rivalry meant to both of them as well as the combat sports world. Even now as McGregor and Diaz are both dealing with a string of tough losses with a combined 2-6 record in their past eight fights, a trilogy between them would almost certainly pull off record-breaking numbers for the UFC and that’s all thanks to the lasting rivalry these two will share forever and always.

Photo by Raymond Hall/GC Images

vs. Society

Meshew: In truth, McGregor’s greatest feud is his battle with this balance beam — the only opponent to not only have defeated him, but one that made him look foolish in the process — but instead of lampooning McGregor for his 21st century update to the phrase “tilting at windmills,” I’ve decided to argue that McGregor’s greatest feud is with the laws of a functioning society. Yes, his fights with Aldo were the catalyst for it all. His rivalry with Diaz propelled him to new heights, while his feud with Khabib made MMA look foolish. All of these are passing fantasies. McGregor’s war on respectable social interaction is the gift that keeps on giving.

Since becoming a global superstar, McGregor has faced more legal trouble than any fighter in the sport, including that bastion of moral respectability, Jon Jones. There’s the aforementioned bus attack, where he injured and traumatized other UFC fighters, where he ultimately got off with community service, anger management, and restitution. He was also charged with the incident in which he smashed phones. He pleaded guilty to the pub charge and paid a fine. He has been accused of multiple sexual assaults. He allegedly attacked Machine Gun Kelly, Francesco Facchinetti and all of them within a span of approximately a month. His most recent offense saw him being arrested, and his car taken away on suspicion of dangerous driving. He also got in an altercation at Bellator with Marc Goddard, and some of his terrible comments on the microphone. In each of these instances, McGregor had the charges dropped or got off lightly, but the totality of it really is impressive.

McGregor seems to view the rules as guidelines. Afterward, he will do what is expected of him and apologize, pay restitution, etc,but another incident is always coming down the pipeline, and that’s why this is his most compelling feud. There is nothing more exciting than watching a man with everything fighting so openly against his inner demons, determined to return him back to where he started. The possibility McGregor may have acted in part to fulfill his character’s requirements makes the story even more compelling.

Bill Simmons coined the phrase “The Tyson Zone” to describe a celebrity whose behavior had become so erratic that you could believe any headline that came out about them, and McGregor falls firmly into that category. If news broke tomorrow that McGregor challenged the moon to a boxing match with Steve Harvey as the referee, no one would be like, “Hmmm, seems out of character.” This is simply who “Notorious” is, and he’s not going to change for anybody. Hell, he already told us so himself.