To Know the Enemy

Conor McGregor, Nate Diaz and the broken veil of invincibility

“If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.”

-Sun Tzu, The Art of War

When it lands, something intangible vanishes altogether from the cage and the world around it. An aura of invulnerability ceases to surround the wobbling man, an unseeable shell suddenly split open. He is the same size as he had been when he entered the cage yet as he staggers he’s so much smaller. The keen eye had seen cracks in the shell earlier, in the slowed footsteps, the labored movements, heaving breaths. But even the wisest of watchers had in part wondered if that intangible thing the man had spoken into existence was real, or at least close enough to real that it could go on being believed a little longer.

There are watchers in the shaking stands and in front of television screens that dismiss Conor McGregor’s profane claims of grandeur, that are not surprised when his head jerks suddenly with the left that lands clean. But to dismiss the aura of the man is to betray the importance of the moment, and what a stunning moment it is! It seems to play out all at once while we wonder wide-eyed if it is really happening at all. Through his bloody smile Nate Diaz appears unaware that he’s there to lose, that the world had believed this man’s violent predictions as reality rather than delusional daydream. He’s talking now, gesturing, taunting, slapping. Many are stunned to silence as they watch the aura fade with each concussive punch, but Diaz had never seen it in the first place. He’s standing now, flexing, bleeding but not noticing or perhaps not caring.

He’s been hit before, the firetongued Irishman. He’s been losing, on his back as Chad Mendes’ elbows rained down on him. He’s even lost, as a baldheaded, loud-mouth pup in his pre-UFC days, with little in his arsenal but a left hand killshot. But we’d never seen him hurt, never seen despair ignite in his eyes — against Mendes, he treated the smaller man’s elbows and overhands like a buzzing fly’s bite; his losses came not after prolonged beatings but quick submissions. It’s only now, as Diaz paces and poses like it’s any other night in any other cage, that we see lumps swell McGregor’s cheeks and forehead, that we see him staring up at the MGM Grand’s ceiling, heaving while doctors attend to him. We’d seen him hit, but we’d never watched him drown.

Becoming Touchable

“At the end of the day, you’ve got to feel some way. So why not feel unbeatable? Why not feel untouchable? Why not feel like the best to ever do it?”

-Conor McGregor

Dec. 11, 2015

He dances through the pre-fight walk as if the post-fight celebration has already begun. He’s shadowboxing, more as play than practice, ducking and weaving for the cameras that follow him. His opponent will make the same walk soon, but his opponent is of little consequence. As the piercing war cry of Sinead O’Connor fades to make way for the relaxed flow of Biggie Smalls, the Irishman has already won. Many fighters predict the future with confidence and conviction, but as they walk to the cage their minds rattle with the buzzing potential of being wrong, of losing, of being exposed. McGregor’s predictions are only in the details — the shot that will be the one to land clean, the distance into the first round the fight will go — but victory is a destination rather than a possibility. The man that will make the walk after him is the best fighter in the world, the division’s only king, and yet to McGregor he’s only another number.

For spectators that watched the fight solely based on recent infatuation for McGregor, of which there were many, the Irishman’s one-punch knockout of Jose Aldo was stunning in its quickness but not altogether shocking as an outcome. McGregor was the one they knew, you see, and what they knew of him was that he knocks people out and he’s not shy beforehand. Aldo meant nothing to them besides what they had heard in pre-fight promotional videos and the commentators’ compliments. He was “The Guy With The Belt” in this act of the McGregor story, and his only role was to relinquish it.

But for those who truly followed the fight game, those who had spent years watching the Brazilian buzzsaw through featherweight contenders, the moment bordered on surreal. To see Aldo surging forward and then suddenly falling forward, petrified by some unseen shot…the only reasonable reaction regardless of allegiance was to try to catch your breath and decide if what you’re seeing is real.

In one moment, with one punch, McGregor had validated his grand claims, his boasting, his machine-gun spray of verbal attacks at any that dared to question his status.

Before that moment, there was skepticism. From the beginning of his UFC career in 2013, the aura was there, but fainter. We squinted to look for the holes in it.

As he dispatched his early opponents with ease it was difficult not to get caught up in the hyperbole. After only three wins in the organization, he was declaring himself the best fighter on the roster. There was an absurdity to his claims, but for some reason you couldn’t quite laugh them off. Look at him, sitting up there in a brightly colored, skintight three-piece and sunglasses, the other fighters mildly amused in their T-shirts. His painfully obvious haircut, shaved around the sides and tied back in tight braids on top. Or later, in the cage now, a giant gorilla eating a heart plastered across his chest. None of it should work, but somehow it does. Perhaps you watched him in those early days and prayed for it all to come crashing down, for Dustin Poirier, or Dennis Siver, or Chad Mendes, to knock McGregor out cold and prove him a fraud. But you watched him. You watched him because whether it pained you to admit it or not, he captivated you. He told you he was the greatest and he was untouchable and a part of you wanted to believe him, if only to have witnessed something special.

He entered the cage against Aldo as a slight underdog — a true testament to Aldo’s legendary reign; not even the brightening aura around McGregor or his legions of passionate fans could keep the Brazilian from being the favorite in the end.

He left the cage as close to untouchable as a man can appear. There’s a thing about Conor McGregor that invites childlike irrationality — of course he will lose one day…but what if he doesn’t? What if his next prediction — “dusting” the lightweight champion Rafael Dos Anjos in under one minute — comes true? Will he beat Robbie Lawler next and hold three belts?

Perhaps, in the case of Conor McGregor, we were prone to these delusions because we lived vicariously through the man — a man who verbally cuts down anyone in his way, who aims higher than what seems possible and laughs his way to the top. So when it was announced that McGregor would be fighting Nate Diaz, at 170 pounds, rather than Dos Anjos, there was little cause for concern. Little thought given to Diaz’s toughness, his durability, his years spent in the game. The fight would end like McGregor fights do, with a smiling Irishman and a soreskulled opponent. It was reasonable to be shocked, on March 5, when it all came crashing down. But perhaps we were foolish to have been surprised.

The Little Brother

“He’s not a needle mover…His brother is a needle mover, he’s not…Listen, if Nate Diaz was the guy, we’d work it out in a minute. If he moved the needle, those are the guys that make the big money. You realize he’s 1–3 in his last [four] fights? He’s nowhere near a title fight, and he doesn’t move the needle.”

-UFC President Dana White

Dec. 19, 2015

They kept him in the shadow, where it was safe to keep him. The shadow of his hero, the man who had shown him this life of swollen hands and split brows, the shadow of his big brother. One Diaz brother on top of the game, curses flying and middle fingers raised, had been enough. Another would be too dangerous of a headache.

When Nate Diaz stepped into the cage one week after McGregor began his reign, his brother wasn’t with him. Nick had been suspended five years by the Nevada State Athletic Commission for testing positive for marijuana, a heinously unfair sentence that would later be reduced.

The elder Diaz seemed at the time to be most enraged that his suspension meant he could not corner Nate for his fight against heavy-favorite Michael Johnson.

“This isn’t a sport, this is war; this is warfare. This is a war game. He’s going in there to fight for his life and I can’t even stand next to him?” Nick said, his voice fraught with anxiety.

“I can’t even go help my little brother.”

Nate may have been without his closest compatriot on that night in Orlando, but he didn’t take long to remind us that the Diaz brothers were still here. The Stockton natives had fought through too much to be silenced by boardroom bureaucrats and billionaire businessmen.

Diaz was, as he often had been, put there to lose. Michael Johnson was the #5 lightweight in the world and Nate had been toiling away on the sidelines for over a year. Every fighter has a role to play, and on that night Diaz’s role was to put on a show, as the Diaz brothers do, but also to give a surging contender another win. And not cause too much trouble. Nate had other plans.

He walked through Johnson’s best shots and began finding a home for his jab, and then the one-two. He looked as loose as ever, his fists circling each other in the air before popping Johnson’s jaw. When a combination landed he would smile, nod, point at the frustrated and stung Johnson. That shit hurt you, he’d be saying with each taunting point of a finger or open-hand slap. This was a war game, like his big brother said, and Nate was fighting and he was playing.

When his hand was raised, the crowd in Orlando and those at home waited for what was sure to be a memorable post-fight interview. The FOX censors hovered over the ‘mute’ button and the UFC brass gritted their teeth.

Commentator Joe Rogan’s first question to Nate was ignored. Diaz already had a statement prepared, one that would be silenced on national broadcasts but would soon become a piece of history.

“Conor McGregor, you’re taking everything I work for, motherfucker. I’m gonna fight your fuckin’ ass. You know what’s the real fight, what’s the real money fight, it’s me!”

He was one of several fighters that night to call out McGregor, including the headlining lightweight champion Rafael Dos Anjos. Dos Anjos was predictably chosen to be McGregor’s next opponent. The opportunity to make history, by holding two belts at the same time, was worth more to the Irishman than a grudge match with the Stockton native.

Still there was an honesty in Diaz’s outburst. ‘Real fights’ vs. ‘not real fights’ is an arbitrary argument, but one could concede that Diaz presented perhaps ‘the realest fight’. For a decade he stayed in the trenches, fighting top opponents every year — and fighting them. Diaz knows this is no sport, the act of two men stepping into a cage. For fans and pundits and the suits in the Red Rock it can be called a sport, but for the men in the hand-wraps and tiny gloves it is a war. So when Nate went toe to toe with Donald “Cowboy” Cerrone in 2011 or Jim Miller in 2012, he treated it as war. He stared daggers at them, flipped them the bird, swore at them, treated them for what they were — combatants, not competitors. And when it was all over, he shook their hands. Nate Diaz was one of a kind, yet he had little to show for it: His disclosed payment to go to war with Michael Johnson was $20,000 to show, $20,000 to win.

It took the hands of fate to give Nate Diaz his well-earned chance, his shot to step out of Nick’s shadow and into the spotlight where a star of his caliber belonged. Rafael Dos Anjos pulled out of his March 5 fight with Conor McGregor, and Nate was chosen to step in. They gave him ten days to prepare.

The fight game is one of hindsight, of looking back on a result and wondering how we hadn’t seen it coming. In the fiery, foul-mouthed buildup to the contest, Nate could not match the quick-witted barbs of the impeccably spoken McGregor. But he succeeded in getting his message across, however simplistic it may have sounded at the time: There are levels to this game, and this is a different type of fight, one McGregor is unaccustomed to. This is a Diaz fight.

McGregor predicted an early knockout, as he does. Headline-hunting reporters pressed Nate to make his own prediction.

“He better hope he gets that knockout,” Diaz said. “Otherwise it’s gonna be a fucked up night for him.”

Trading Leather, Testing Legacies

“He’s a good fighter and everything, but he’s where he’s at because of the push he’s getting, you know what I’m saying? So I’m gonna take that shit and make it mine.”

-Nate Diaz

March 5, 2016

McGregor leans forward on the stool, dejected, swollen. Heaving breaths slip past the bitter taste and drowned predictions in his mouth. Diaz, his face a mess of only superficial consequence, stands over him. He speaks to McGregor, his words muted by the crowd’s roar. He pats him on the head, shakes his hand.

They are similar, these two men from opposite sides of the world who stood once, and will stand again, on opposite sides of the cage. For all of the Irishman’s lyrical insults and financial boasting, he fights as if wins and losses are artificial and useless compared to the rush of true combat. He wades forward into violence, ignoring any inclination to take a back step. He thumps his opponents with left hands while slapping them with profane taunts. And when it’s all over, he pays the man a due respect. When he was coming up in the game, some jokingly labeled him McDiaz.

And so it is fitting, poetic in a way only combat can be, that he fell for the first time in his UFC career to Nate Diaz. The fight was finished with a rear-naked choke — delighting the McGregor doubters who love to question his ground game — but it was lost with a punch. When Diaz fired a left cross shortly behind his jab he altered the fight game, reversing a train from the path it had so far followed. More importantly, he had fulfilled a profane promise from months ago. Conor McGregor had not, as Diaz put it, intentionally “taken everything” he works for, but he did have something that Diaz deserved. The right to stardom, the chance to show the world he was more than the foul-mouthed B-side to a big fight. More than somebody’s little brother.

On August 20, the two men will fight again. It is a vanity project of sorts, one superstar’s stubborn refusal to accept a defeat. The bout had been originally scheduled for UFC 200 and was scrapped: McGregor’s tunnel-vision training for the rematch meant he scoffed at his Vegas promotional responsibilities, drawing the wrath of the bosses. Quite the “Diaz” move on the Irishman’s part.

Some fans scowl at the stakes of the bout — there’s no belt on the line, and again the two men will fight in a weight class that they do not belong in. But to overstate the importance of gold is to undervalue the personal weight of the fight. Diaz, finally validated, somehow the underdog, again put there to lose. This time he’s in the cage so he might fall to the man he finished without controversy, so that the UFC’s biggest star can regain his shine and send Diaz away for the time being. McGregor, cornered by his own pride, seeking validation as much as retribution, suddenly touchable, beatable.

The ramifications for each man is palpable. Diaz can cement his place in history and continue to take what the fight game refused for years to give to him. McGregor can prove himself worthy of the legacy he foresees in his mind and guarantees in his words.

Days before the bout, the weight of the fight becomes apparent. Silent respect at once becomes amplified disdain. Press conferences end in shouted epithets, finger-waving and thrown bottles. When men of similar minds and wills are forced to confront, such ugly collisions are inevitable. These fighters have spent much of this year examining themselves, and examining one another. What they see in one case bears a striking resemblance to what they see in the other.