UFC 189's main event of Chad Mendes and Conor McGregor isn't the featherweight title fight fans thought they'd be seeing, but it's one of the best consolation prizes the organization could have offered.
Jose Aldo and the featherweight championship gave way to Mendes and an interim title, but what makes the bout interesting still remains.
In a way, UFC 189's main event was never about the title. It was about McGregor. It would appear he has everything he needs to be the UFC's next big star.
He's a charismatic personality with endless confidence and a knack for knocking people out. Four of his five wins under the UFC banner have come by way of knockout. As MMA Infographics demonstrates, the man simply knows how to finish fights:
Hate him or love him, the Irishman has already proven he's good. The only question left now is how good. At this point, that question is a little more difficult to answer. While wins have all come against good competition, none of it has come against the top tier of his division. At the time of this writing, only one of McGregor's wins are over a fighter in the top 10 of the division.
The names that make up his five-fight UFC record don't exactly create the traditional path to the title. His opponents have been predominantly of the striking variety. Now McGregor gets the opportunity to answer the one question naysayers can still ask of him—how will he do against a wrestler?
When: Saturday, July 11
Start Time: Fight Pass prelims at 7 p.m. ET (subscription required); Fox Sports 1 prelims at 8 p.m. ET; main card pay-per-view at 10 p.m. ET
Where: MGM Grand, Las Vegas
Live Stream: UFC.tv
Tickets: ScoreBig.com
Fight Preview
The clash of styles between Mendes and McGregor is more interesting than the original matchup of McGregor vs. Aldo. While it would have been great fun to watch the elite striking of McGregor and Aldo go back-and-forth the additional dimension of Mendes' wrestling is another layer of intrigue.
Mendes' isn't one-dimensional, though. He has proven that he has power on the feet and the numbers paint the picture of a fighter who is able to avoid damage in the stand-up game. Here's how the two fighters match up statistically according to FightMetric.
Looking at those numbers a few things stand out. First, McGregor's perfect takedown defense. On the surface, that would point to a man who doesn't have any issues with defensive wrestling. However, upon closer inspection, he's only had to defend five takedowns in his UFC career.
Dennis Siver tried to take him down three times while Diego Brandao put in two attempts in their bout. Neither is on the same planet as Mendes when it comes to wrestling.
The other thing that jumps out is McGregor's sheer volume of strikes landed. The Notorious ranks fourth in the entire UFC at 5.72 significant strikes landed. His accuracy is nothing to brag about. But that's a byproduct of his style in the cage.
As Jack Slack of Fightland explains, not every strike McGregor throws is designed to land. He's great at creating openings with strikes that encourage his opponent to engage:
This is the beauty of McGregor's game. The seemingly wild kicks almost always leave him in a position to bounce away and come back in with his perfect left straight. Later in the fight, he was able to drop Brandao with a wheel kick and that highlighted the other facet of its importance—if you just stand there and take them you're going to get hurt. The so-called 'hipster kicks' demand the action which McGregor, a counter puncher at heart, thrives off of.
This brings us to the last significant difference between the two fighters. McGregor is the much bigger of the two. The Irishman will have an eight-inch reach and three-inch height advantage. According to Chael Sonnen on the Jim Rome Show ((h/t LowkickMMA.com for the transcription), McGregor will cut from 172 pounds to 145 in the lead-up to the fight.
Being the much longer and conceivably bigger fighter, McGregor has a lot of space to use his feints and kicks to set up counter-punching opportunities.
How well Mendes is able to close that distance without getting countered will tell the tale of this fight.
Prediction
Predictions for this bout are sure to be all over the map. There are definitely more questions than answers at this point. Brett Okamoto of ESPN predicts that McGregor will win via TKO in the third round citing Mendes' short time to prepare for the fight on late notice.
Meanwhile Eric Reinert of Combat Press envisions a decision win for Mendes:
It’s this completeness that compels me to go with Mendes on Saturday. McGregor will have the range advantage, but Mendes’s explosive ability to close the distance will negate that with a quickness. I see this one either remaining standing or with Mendes in top position after taking McGregor to the ground. While I’m not necessarily convinced that Mendes will lay McGregor out like he has many of his other UFC opponents, I do see him controlling the fight for the majority of its 25 minutes en route to a decision win.
Neither man will likely separate from the other as the picks continue to roll in throughout the week. According to Odds Shark, Mendes is only a slight underdog (7-5) to the less-proven McGregor.
If anything, those odds may even out as fight week gives way to fight night. If McGregor's massive weight cut doesn't go according to plan, the odds may even swing in Mendes' favor.
Unless that happens, it feels like it's the right thing to do to give McGregor the edge. For all his bluster and sizzle, there is some substance to the hype train.
Unlike many flashy prospects before him, McGregor's game isn't just predicated on pure power or speed. He's displayed a fight IQ that is as high as any young fighter. His ability to adjust to opponents and lure them into his type of fight has been apparent in his run with the UFC.
We may see him in more danger than he's ever been in, but it's hard to pick against his supreme confidence and style to make UFC 189 his official announcement to the MMA world as a bona fide star.
McGregor via second-round TKO.
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