Jack Leahy | Senior Editor
A famous scene in The Simpsons episode ‘The Homer They Fall’ involves world heavyweight champion Drederick Taytum engaged in a press conference. Asked his opinion of next opponent Homer Simpson, Taytum responds ‘I think he’s a good man. I like him. I got nothing against him, but I’m definitely gonna make orphans of his children.’
Committed followers of the cult TV classic will be aware that Taytum, to the point of his lisp, bankable alter-ego and criminal record, is an unadorned parody of Mike Tyson. But it’s hard to imagine that a parody of game-talking Irish UFC fighter Conor McGregor would sound all that different, save for his accent, a hybrid of Crumlin and California.
McGregor has cultivated a persona that belies him as an artist. He’s the ultimate urban street kid – all thug life and pseudo-philosophy – who threatens to annihilate the opponents that he smugly belittles for the shape of their head or physical condition.
Habitually mined as hype-building gold, his brand of pre-fight trash-talking is an invaluable entertainment commodity. UFC is well-placed to capitalise and its promotion regularly foregoes decency and sportsmanship for the sake of a fast buck. As a result, successful prizefighting is no longer necessarily about how well someone can fight, or even their level of in-ring pizzazz. It’s about savoir faire – an alternative rat-race to the top of the pay-per-view pile.
That McGregor’s paydays and ratings are as high as they are right now is a vindication – if not a moral endorsement – of his approach. Despite never having beaten a top-five fighter in his division, the Dublin fighter is one of UFC’s prized promotional assets. What he lacks in highest-level achievement he compensates for with an innate capacity to fast-track himself into the top-level mix.
It is an approach that jars with fellow professionals. Chad Mendes accused him of ‘trying to get to the top without doing the work’. McGregor himself isn’t all that bothered about accusations of running his mouth in a manner unbecoming of a professional, telling Setanta Sports last month that he ‘doesn’t need any more friends from the sport’.
The same interview showcased something of McGregor’s insidiously playful attitude towards pre-fight build-up. When asked about his particular brand of hype-building, he simply fed the language of the question into his trash-talking algorithm and produced the kind of banalities that the interviewer should have expected.
For McGregor, every public occasion is an opportunity to reaffirm the same jaded quips deriding the resemblance his opponents bear to Simpsons characters.
There’s nothing inherently harmful, psychologically speaking, to McGregor’s limelight conduct. But UFC bosses need only to look at the withering audiences for professional boxing to learn the consequences of an escalating thuggish preamble. The UFC has recently imposed a code of conduct, advising fighters that derogatory conduct including offensive language invites disciplinary action. At the moment, though, the sport is too fractured and zygotic to regulate in such a manner.
While a respect agenda would be welcomed, sanitisation would not. There is a balance to be struck. UFC President Dana White knows there is a fine line between the hype and sales that trash-talk can generate and the guttural inaccessibility brought upon boxing by David Haye and Tyson Fury, among others.
Mixed martial arts is, after all, far from gentile. It’s a sport based on extremes – from its very notion to the characters that inhabit it. Hang-wringing over such skulduggery must be tempered in accordance. Yet, with instant media either at their disposal or pointed ubiquitously in their direction, fighters suddenly have an unfettered platform. But is that beneficial, or should freedom of speech be compromised in a bid to future-proof the sport?
Mike Tyson perfected this idea of a bankable alter-ego. In 1997, once his second career had begun to unravel, ‘Iron Mike’, a one-time ring terror left trading on reputation, adapted accordingly. He unleashed a grotesque caricature of himself that titillated sufficiently in order to buy him some time. In enabling a culture that craves controversy, maybe the only thing these fighters are guilty of is ingenuity. That there is an appetite for such material reveals more about society than it does about combat sport.
Whenever months of fevered backbiting finally results in a Conor McGregor fight, that nothing could live up to the hype invariably produces an anti-climax. Lower-grade opponents and the choreographed showmanship of it all can only get him so far. He’ll have to start walking the walk where it matters.
