Conor McGregor: The Soon To Be Fading Superstar

Even though Conor McGregor is currently the most popular in the UFC it is increasingly clear that his popularity will soon start to fade due to a potential internal conflict about his fighting style. When Conor McGregor is fighting he likes to throw one strike at a time and then reset for a couple seconds before throwing another strike which leads to his opponents taking three to four steps back in order to avoid getting hit. Once they are out of range, they will take one or two steps forward in an attempt to regain some of the ground they lost before he throws his next strike. As a result, McGregor is slowly forcing his opponents to move back behind the black lines. When his opponents are behind the black lines he will start throwing combinations because it will be more difficult for them to move away from him and he does not have to worry about spending energy chasing them. For instance, against Dennis Siver McGregor would throw either a left kick to the body, a left spinning wheel kick, left front kick to the body or a right side kick and reset which forced Siver to take three to four steps back in order to avoid getting hit. After he got out of range, he was able to take one or two steps forward in an attempt to regain some of the ground he lost before McGregor threw his next strike. This process continued until Siver was behind the black lines once that happened McGregor threw a straight left, left hook, left uppercut and a right hook to the body combination, which was the beginning of the end.

Although Conor McGregor has experienced a wealth of success at featherweight with this fighting style if he wants to experience success at lightweight and/or welterweight he needs to attack the weakness of his opponents. For instance in the rematch against Nate Diaz, he should focus on throwing a substantial amount of left leg kicks because Diaz most of his weight on the right leg as he’s moving forward and to get a couple extra inches of extension on his jab. If McGregor follows his game plan for the first two rounds he will limit Nate's movement and take away his best punch. But the downside to Conor McGregor creating game plans around the weaknesses of his opponents is that fights will not be as exciting as they used to be thus the casual fans will start to walk away but at the same thing if he keeps his current fighting style he will most likely run out of stamina after two rounds because he will realize that most fighters who are heavier have a strong enough chin to withstand his power. As a result, he will start throwing harder punches in an effort to finish his opponents thus wasting large amounts of energy and allowing the opponents to capitalize on this and win. Which also opens the door for casual fans to stop watching his fights.

Therefore, the only way he can maintain and/or grow his popularity is by trying to become the GSP of the featherweight division where he fights there for the rest of his career and tries to clean out the division multiple times thus gaining the moniker of the best featherweight of all time. But he will not do that because he sees the opportunity to become a transcendent superstar if he can beat heavier fighters with his current fighting style thus decreasing his popularity.