Paid Members Supremo Posted July 10 Paid Members Posted July 10 He looks like when someone returns from Glastonbury Festival and tries to argue they feel, “refreshed.” What’s five years in Cocaine Years? Looks a lot. Quote
poetofthedeed Posted July 10 Posted July 10 There is nothing behind McGregor's eyes, that man is dead inside. Quote
Paid Members wandshogun09 Posted July 10 Author Paid Members Posted July 10 Looks like an absolute bag of shite 🤣 hard to believe this senior citizen looking scruff turns just 38 in a few days. I swear, as much as I’m a fan of Max Holloway, if he loses to this raggedy looking cunt after a five year layoff, in 2026, it might be time to just pack it in and do something else. Quote
Dai Posted July 10 Posted July 10 Ive seen that Supremo pic with a picture of him a few years before that too, and its crazy how much worse he looks compared to then. I just cant see past a Stipe Miocic against Jones perfirnance here from Conor, he just has to be completely past it. If it makes it to R2 then surely he will be completely gassed too. I think the only question for me is how much of his aura will be shattered in this one, not if. Surely a really bad visual will damage his Netflix negotiations, or maybe it makes no difference as his fanboys will always support him. Quote
Dai Posted July 10 Posted July 10 Double post wanker, but thought id point out that in pretty much 4 pages we haven't mentioned Paddy at all. When you think of how much we usually talk about him when hes fighting, hes just been swallowed whole by the McGregor train. Plenty occurring on the prelims too that McGregor has overshadowed. Whitakers 205 debut, which surely wont end well. Gable Stevensons debut. Gabrant hopefully getting smashed too. Quote
Paid Members John Matrix Posted July 10 Paid Members Posted July 10 I mean, I know he’s not so popular these days but I for one commend McGregor for taking time out of his busy fight prep to mark The Office 25th anniversary celebrations. Quote
FTR2020 Posted July 11 Posted July 11 I am praying Holloway knocks McGregor the f..k out and humbles him. Quote
Paid Members Egg Shen Posted July 11 Paid Members Posted July 11 10 hours ago, Dai said: Double post wanker, but thought id point out that in pretty much 4 pages we haven't mentioned Paddy at all. When you think of how much we usually talk about him when hes fighting, hes just been swallowed whole by the McGregor train. Plenty occurring on the prelims too that McGregor has overshadowed. Whitakers 205 debut, which surely wont end well. Gable Stevensons debut. Gabrant hopefully getting smashed too. It is a cracking card, looking forward to most of it. Quote
Paid Members wandshogun09 Posted July 11 Author Paid Members Posted July 11 (edited) Well it’s fight day. I think it’s pretty safe to assume nobody’s dropping out now. Maybe. I’ve got a free house for a few hours so, with a couple of rematches on the card, I’m gonna do my thing of looking back at the first fights. Let’s do this one first because it’s a fight that’s not really gonna get much attention. It went down in Brooklyn back in January 2019 and it was right at the start of the UFC’s big deal with ESPN. This was their debut show on the network and I remember at the time the thinking seemed to be that they’d stacked it up. Looking at the card now though, not really. I mean, they put Greg Hardy in the co-main, for fuck’s sake. I get it was just a Fight Night but come on. The fact the UFC were pushing that woman beating scumbag so hard is as laughable as it is depressing. Fast forward seven years and we’re on the eve of a show featuring two rapists. Some things never change. The Cejudo vs Dillashaw main event was carrying this one. But to be fair, there were names like Joseph Benavidez, Paige VanZant, Glover Teixeira and Donald Cerrone on the card. As for this fight, Sandhagen and Bautista met on the prelims. This was actually supposed to be Sandhagen against John ‘Hands Of Stone’ Lineker originally. Lineker dropped out with a rib injury and Bautista stepped in on short notice. This was his UFC debut. He was 25 years old at the time of this fight and unbeaten at 6-0 with 5 finishes. Sandhagen was 26 years old with a 9-1 record, 2-0 in the UFC. Cory Sandhagen vs Mario Bautista UFC on ESPN+1: Cejudo vs Dillashaw January 19th 2019 Brooklyn, New York I usually go by year on Fight Pass to find these old fights but I couldn’t even find the prelims for this card that way. Only the main card. Had to manually search ‘Sandhagen vs Bautista’ and it came up but it’s a bare bones video that starts by going straight into the Buffer intros. Fine but I like the little video packages before the fights, especially when rewatching old stuff, as a little memory refresher. Oh well. Referee is Kevin MacDonald. Commentators for this are Jon Anik and Daniel Cormier. Round 1: Both seem to want a fast start and come out pretty aggressive. Sandhagen kicking a lot and there’s something about him here, the aggression and even his attitude, that seems different. He’s kind of taunting Bautista at one point early here. Waving his hands at him to come forward. And he’s been non-stop on the offence so far. I don’t know if he’s naturally calmed down and become more tactical with age and experience or if it’s just a case that he’s had to reign it in a bit as he’s stepped up in levels and suffered a few setbacks. But here in 2019, he is going after Bautista. Constantly marching forward and mixing up his strikes. Ooof! Beautiful flying knee drops Bautista. That’s another thing you don’t see as much out of him these days but it kind of became his go-to best weapon for a while. Obviously the flying knee he brutally knocked Frankie Edgar out with a couple of years after this is the one people remember but I also recall him tagging Dillashaw with a few beauties in their fight as well. To his credit, Bautista took it well and seems to have his wits about him quite quickly. He’s trying to initiate the grappling but Sandhagen’s controlling him well. Bautista’s got the body lock from behind and Sandhagen’s got a grip on his arm. Bautista slams him but Sandhagen’s still got that arm and, as soon as they hit the mat, he’s instantly trying to lock up an inverted triangle from the bottom! They’re squashed up against the fence though, which is hindering and stifling him. Bautista breaks free, they’re briefly back up but Sandhagen uses a Kimura grip to drag him back down, teases going for the mount but then switches to the armbar. And it’s a wrap. Bautista is forced to tap. Winner - Cory Sandhagen by submission. Round 1 - 3:31. Fantastic performance from Sandhagen there. The flying knee that started it all and then the sequence of submission attempts that led to the finish. Lovely stuff. Enjoyable enough fight while it lasted, short and sweet, although it did ultimately end up as a bit of a fancy squash match. In fairness to Bautista, yeah, this was short notice and his UFC debut. Possibly a case of the old ‘Octagon jitters?’ And he was unbeaten but only had six fights under his belt going in. So probably a bit green as well. Not to take away from Sandhagen’s performance at all though. He pressured Bautista from the off, dropped him with the knee and finished him on the ground. All inside a round. You can’t knock that. It’s one of them though, like the McGregor vs Holloway fight, where I think the rematch is almost a completely different and fresh fight. Sandhagen is still a very good fighter but, like I said, he’s had a few losses since 2019, a couple of failed title shots etc. And Bautista is a much better fighter than he was back then, and probably one of the more underrated Bantamweights on the roster for me currently. I don’t see him ever winning UFC gold but he’s found his feet in the seven years since his debut and looks a lot more comfortable in there now. He’s gone 11-2 since that loss to Sandhagen in 2019, with notable wins over Jose Aldo and Patchy Mix. Although Aldo was finishing up and Mix was inexplicably rotten in his short UFC stay. Bautista looked great subbing Vinicius Oliveira in his last fight in February too. Sandhagen has gone 8-5 since the first fight. Worse than Bautista if we’re talking purely numbers-wise and a straight win/loss ratio, but he’s fought a tougher level of competition on a more consistent basis overall than Bautista. His losses have been to the likes of Aljo, Dillashaw (in a debatable split decision), Yan, Umar and Merab. I mean, fuck! That’s a who’s who of 135 right there. No shame in losing to any of them. Yeah, not sure what to expect out of this rematch but I think it’ll be a lot more competitive this time around. Edited July 11 by wandshogun09 Quote
Zebra Kid Mark Posted July 11 Posted July 11 Great write up. I think tonight’s fight will go the distance. Both fight a lot more safer style now. It seems so long ago that we used to get title fights on Fight Night shows. Quote
Paid Members wandshogun09 Posted July 11 Author Paid Members Posted July 11 (edited) Right then. Back to 2013 for this one. And sorry, it might take you until 2033 to read all this. Not even sure if I’ve ever watched this back since the first viewing in 2013 but I feel like I remember fairly accurately how the whole thing played out. McGregor had made his UFC debut in April, knocking out Marcus Brimage in the first round, on the prelims of a Fight Night in Stockholm, Sweden. And not just that, his fight was just the fourth prelim on the Facebook stream. I remember there being some real fan hype around his debut but, despite what Dana says now, maybe the UFC didn’t fully see it right away. They didn’t exactly put much of a spotlight on him, did they? But between his performance, post-fight interview and media stuff, the MMA world was buzzing about him by the end of that weekend. The UFC already had the Boston card pencilled in for August as the big debut show on FOX Sports 1 and with Boston having such a heavy Irish population, it was a no brainer that McGregor’s next fight would land there. A forgotten bit of trivia here is that he was originally supposed to face Geordie fighter Andy Ogle but Ogle dropped out. Holloway was 21 at the time and wasn’t anywhere near the force he’d go on to become later, but he was still a step up from Brimage and clearly a much stiffer test than Ogle would’ve been. He was 7-2 going into this one and coming off a split decision loss to Dennis Bermudez, which a lot of people had Holloway winning. Despite this fight also being on the prelims, it was basically ‘the people’s main event’ by the time fight week rolled around. Anyone who was a fan at the time will remember the buzz in the run up to this show. A show with a Shogun vs Sonnen headliner plus names like Overeem and Faber in prominent positions on the card and this McGregor vs Holloway prelim was getting the bulk of the attention going in. It was barmy how quickly McGregor had caught on. The UFC clearly recognised something special was happening and they made a point of having McGregor’s entrance air on the live broadcast, the UFC never usually showed walkouts for Fight Night prelims. They also gave it the full ‘lights out’ effect which was typically reserved for main events. Conor McGregor vs Max Holloway UFC on FOX Sports 1: Shogun vs Sonnen August 17th 2013 Boston, Massachusetts The fight hasn’t even started yet and there’s a real electricity in the crowd. Again, it’s mad when you think that McGregor had only had one fight in the UFC at this point, on the Facebook prelims of a Fight Night card in Europe, and he already feels like a huge deal here. I hate the cunt now of course, but it can’t be denied there was nothing quite like his rise. I can’t recall another fighter in MMA history who got so hot so fast, while still a prelim fighter. Anyway, commentators for this are Jon Anik and Joe Rogan. Referee is old reliable Herb Dean. As in, you can usually rely on him to fuck up pretty badly at least once on any card he works. The ‘gold standard of referees’ indeed. Round 1: McGregor coming out right away, taking the centre of the Octagon and throwing all manner of wacky kicks from that wide Karate stance he used to love. It almost looks like he’s taking the piss, like when Nick Diaz started throwing all them weird slow motion kicks in the first Robbie Lawler fight way back in 2004. But the difference is, it’s actually working for McGregor. Seriously, within the first probably 45 seconds he’s already thrown a couple of jumping switch kicks, a lead leg hook kick and a hopping push kick to the knee. None of them really landed clean but he’s chucking so much unorthodox shit out there that Max doesn’t know what’s coming next. He’s started throwing that lead right uppercut, straight left hand combo now as well. Clearly nicked that lead uppercut off Prince Naz. Conor used to throw it a lot back then. Nice right from Conor behind the kick there. Max just can’t getting anything going here. He’s not been visibly hurt or anything but McGregor’s constantly throwing stuff at him and mixing up his attacks. It’s kind of forcing Max into a shell because he has to think defence all the time instead of getting his own offence going. Conor actually tries a spin kick to the leg and Max answers by trying a ‘Showtime punch’ springing off the fence. Neither land. Last minute of the round now and both still mostly kicking. Conor connects with a couple of straight lefts towards the end. Nothing major but Rogan immediately goes “Max is in all sorts of trouble here”. He’s not though. He’s clearly lost the round but at no point was he in any real danger. Conor with a…rolling nothing straight into a cuddle. And that’s the end of the round. Clear cut 10-9 McGregor round that. Round 2: Conor comes out picking up right where he left off and finally connects pretty clean with that lead right uppercut, straight left combo he’s been trying to find a home for… Best punch of the fight from either man so far. Proper snapped Max’s head back. But as we learned over the next bunch of years, Max has a chin on him that stood the test of time until Topuria finally put a dent in it a couple of years ago. I’ll say this though, and I didn’t remember this, Conor already looks like he’s slowing down and less light on his feet here. Just a minute into the second round. Yeah, he’s definitely slower and more flat footed and we’re not even at the point where he suffers the knee injury yet. Rogan again acting like Max is fucked when he’s not. Jesus wept. Max starting to throw more now and they both connect in the exchanges. Good stuff there and Conor’s still getting the better of this round. Max landing leg kicks though and he does catch McGregor with a counter left as he’s leaping in. Even Rogan takes Conor’s balls out of his mouth for a second and does kind of admit that Conor’s repeated jumping in with the kick to set his punches up is probably becoming a bit predictable. Conor catches a kick and takes Max down… Again, this is all before the injury. I always remembered it as Conor initially going the takedown route because of the injury but that’s not the case according to the man himself years later. In fact, it’s somewhere here on the ground where it happens. Conor actually talked about it this year after this rematch was signed. “In the second round, I caught a kick, tried to advance past his half guard. He caught my leg in an awkward position and bridge and rolled, and my whole knee just popped out midway through that second round.” - Conor McGregor in May 2026 So there you have it. I’m not sure where the “bridge and rolled” bit happened but, somewhere in the process of him trying to pass Max’s guard, his knee got bollocksed. McGregor does posture up at one point and drop some ground and pound but he mostly just controls Max from top position until the end of the round. Not without adversity but another 10-9 in the books for McGregor. Round 3: It’s not even anything special as a fight but the crowd is going banana here regardless as they touch gloves for the last round. Conor still moving slowly but he is throwing kicks despite the bum knee. Max lands a nice right and starts stabbing at the knees with push kicks. He was trying leg kicks early in the fight anyway but I wonder if he knew Conor was injured at this point. Less than 30 seconds into the round and Conor goes for the takedown against the fence and gets it, and really, worryingly, without much resistance at all from Max. Not good. Conor passes guard and is into side control now, again with surprising ease. Again, not good from Max this. Conor goes for the mount but Max uses the opportunity to buck out of it and get back to his feet. But McGregor takes him straight back down. Fuck me. This from Conor now is clearly a case of him playing it safe and just trying to ride out the clock because of the injury. He’s fortunate that Max had suspect takedown defence because if he was in there with someone who could scramble and resist his half arsed shots, he could’ve knackered his knee up even worse getting into grappling situations. Max has no real answers for this though. Conor’s got mount now but he’s staying low, chest to chest, and just holding Max there. Killing time. I do wonder if Conor’s misremembered when the injury happened though because the only times in the fight where Max has “bridge and rolled” has been this round. Maybe it happened in the third and not the second? Whatever. McGregor almost takes the back and he’s landing some decent punches from there and the mount. Really bad look for Holloway this, already 0-2 down and stuck on bottom now. Max finally manages to explode out and get back up with a minute left in the fight. A headkick from Max, which doesn’t land clean but catches Conor off balance. Saw Max was saying the other day that he dropped Conor here but it was nothing really. I’d love to say he did but he just didn’t. Conor noticeably troubled by the bad wheel now. He’s not moving good on it. Still able to get Max down though FFS. And that’s where they stay for the remainder of the round. Fight over and it’s another McGregor round. A clean sweep by my scoring, and really, there’s no other way to score it. Winner - Conor McGregor by unanimous decision. Yeah. Zero suspense as Buffer announces the winner. There was no mystery who won this one. Disaster for Conor really though. Obviously a loss would’ve been worse. He wasn’t bulletproof yet like he was when he lost to Nate later. A loss at this point would’ve been a huge setback. But this was about the worst scenario for him besides a loss. The knee injury wound up sidelining him for almost a full year, right at the time when the UFC were putting the full weight of their PR machine behind him. It all worked out in the end but it was hairy there for a while. Nobody was sure how he’d bounce back from an injury like that. He made his big return in July 2014 on that mad Dublin card and battered Diego Brandao in a round and that was that. The rest is history but that Brandao win and the momentum coming out of that Dublin card in general is where things really started taking off for him. From there it was Poirier, Siver, Mendes and then the barmy 13 seconds of mayhem to dethrone the legendary Jose Aldo. It’s weird looking back at this stuff for me. I was becoming a huge fan of McGregor at this time. I’m ashamed to admit it now but we weren’t to know back then what a horrible, detestable cunt he’d go on to become. I’ve said it before on here but looking at clips and interviews of him on the rise, he seems like a different guy entirely to the cretin we see now. The way he talks is different. There’s humour in it, he comes across as a fun character and easy to like, there’s a genuine charm to it all. I don’t know if he was always an arsehole but hid it better back then or what. But once he got powerful and rich, he became a monster. And I don’t mean in the good way, as in a monster in the cage. Seriously, if you can stomach it, and I don’t blame you if you can’t, you watch a clip of him talking from 2013-15 and then watch a clip of him talking from anytime from about 2017 on. It’s night and day. I used to think the phrase “money doesn’t buy happiness” was shite but in McGregor’s case, it’s mostly been bitterness, hatred and anger coming from him ever since he got that mega $100 million payday for the Mayweather fight. Anyway… Here we go then. Needless to say I hope Holloway absolutely annihilates the dirty rapist tonight. In an ideal world Max seriously fucks him up to the point he never wants to step into a cage or ring again. But I recognise that an ‘ideal world’ doesn’t exist, especially in MMA. Christ, this year alone we’ve seen Sean Strickland beat Khamzat to become champ again, Josh Hokit is a thing now, Ciryl Gane is being rewarded for cheating and Tom Aspinall is being treated as the heel in that whole saga, and the UFC are expanding their roster of rapists on this very card with the addition of Gable Steveson. In 2026, McGregor somehow beating the ultimate babyface Holloway almost feels like the way the whole thing is trending. It’s like Armageddon out here. Like we’re living in end times as old school MMA fans who still remember what it used to be like. On a serious note, yeah, Max should school him tonight. I don’t like the idea of him going up to 170 and I still maintain that’s nothing more than shithousery from McGregor trying to get an edge, after already reaping the benefits of juicing with immunity for years on end now. But still, any 38 year old fighter coming off a five year layoff is gonna be up against it at the best of times. Then you add in the injury. Has any fighter ever been right after that kind of leg injury? Anderson Silva wasn’t, Chris Weidman wasn’t, why should McGregor be any different? Then you factor in his lifestyle outside the cage. The drinking, the sniffing, the raping and the legal battle that it resulted in, the other various brushes with the law. I’ve seen people argue that McGregor’s layoff could mean he’s fresh now and that, although Max has been active in McGregor’s absence, he’s also racked up a lot of mileage. A valid point but mileage isn’t just damage in the cage. The lifestyle McGregor’s had over the better part of a decade is also miles on the clock. And then you combine that with the inactivity and the age, it’s not a recipe for anything good. And even looking back at this first fight, not only has Max obviously improved in the 13 years since, McGregor was never as bouncy on his feet again once he started moving up in weight. And he still slowed down in that first fight with Max, even before the injury. My main concerns for Max tonight are 1) the early stages. Conor’s probably gonna be dangerous for a round or so. And 2) the takedowns. I can definitely see McGregor at least trying to sprinkle some wrestling in there. Considering it’s how he won the first fight and especially considering Max’s last fight saw him get tied in knots by Charles Oliveira. Obviously McGregor is no Oliveira on the ground but Max’s grappling is a bit of a worry for me. Looking back at his career, at his peak he never faced a lot of grapplers. And he did get subbed with ease by Poirier in their first fight and controlled by McGregor in 2013. His lack of grappling in those losses mostly just got chalked up to him being green. That Oliveira loss does make me wonder though. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think he’s clueless there at all. To survive 25 minutes in a grappling heavy fight with Oliveira is impressive in itself. He can defend himself when he’s taken down. The problem is he’s not very good at stopping the actual takedowns which allows him to be put in bad positions when an opponent goes that route. All that said, Holloway by KO/TKO in the second or third for me. Might have to weather a storm but if it goes past a round, I think it’s Max’s fight to lose. Even with going up in weight, there might be a power discrepancy but I think there’s a chance Conor has underestimated the fact that Max basically won’t have had to cut any weight for this. His usual insane pace and gas tank could be even more brutal on McGregor if it goes longer than about seven minutes. I want this to be pathetically one-sided. I’m hoping people talk about McGregor’s comeback as a bad idea in the way they did after Stipe came back and got squashed by Jones. And I want it to end with Max busting out a KO as vicious as the one that made Gaethje do the Flair Flop. It’s my birthday this week. Can the MMA gods do me this one little thing? Edited July 11 by wandshogun09 Quote
Dai Posted July 11 Posted July 11 Any people who you have read that have said a five year layoff is good and will make Conor 'fresh', you surely cant take anything they say seriously in the future. Possibly the most stupid logic I've ever heard. Imagine how 'fresh' those sort of people thought Gina Carano would be. Conor is getting smash and will look abysmal is my prediction. Can Paddy get it done? I seriously doubt it. Quote
jimufctna24 Posted July 11 Posted July 11 (edited) 54 minutes ago, wandshogun09 said: So there you have it. I’m not sure where the “bridge and rolled” bit happened but, somewhere in the process of him trying to pass Max’s guard, his knee got bollocksed. McGregor does posture up at one point and drop some ground and pound but he mostly just controls Max from top position until the end of the round. Not without adversity but another 10-9 in the books for McGregor. Slack uploaded a video about this a few weeks back. Holloway bridges into McGregor as he's attempting to free his leg and transition from half guard into side control. It occurs with around 16 seconds left in the 2nd round. 54 minutes ago, wandshogun09 said: It’s weird looking back at this stuff for me. I was becoming a huge fan of McGregor at this time. I’m ashamed to admit it now but we weren’t to know back then what a horrible, detestable cunt he’d go on to become. I’ve said it before on here but looking at clips and interviews of him on the rise, he seems like a different guy entirely to the cretin we see now. The way he talks is different. There’s humour in it, he comes across as a fun character and easy to like, there’s a genuine charm to it all. I don’t know if he was always an arsehole but hid it better back then or what. But once he got powerful and rich, he became a monster. And I don’t mean in the good way, as in a monster in the cage. Seriously, if you can stomach it, and I don’t blame you if you can’t, you watch a clip of him talking from 2013-15 and then watch a clip of him talking from anytime from about 2017 on. It’s night and day. I used to think the phrase “money doesn’t buy happiness” was shite but in McGregor’s case, it’s mostly been bitterness, hatred and anger coming from him ever since he got that mega $100 million payday for the Mayweather fight. Josh Gross penned an article for The Guardian about McGregor. Gross recalled interviewing McGregor in the build up to the first Holloway bout for his ESPN podcast, and claimed McGregor spoke more as a sportsman than showman. and even projected "wisps" of humility. In other words, that version of McGregor was a far cry from what he would later become. For what it's worth, Gross believes the more humble version of McGregor was a facade. Btw, my read on tonight's fight is identical to yours. I'm picking Holloway via 3rd round stoppage. Edited July 11 by jimufctna24 Quote
Paid Members Egg Shen Posted July 11 Paid Members Posted July 11 Holloway TKO 3 Pimblett Decision Sandhagan Decision Kavanagh Decision Green TKO 2 Quote
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