Sorry, I only just saw this now.
I'm not saying McGregor is a bad fighter. McGregor is a great fighter. I'm just saying I'm at almost twenty eight years of kick boxing and I can offer some worth while insight. I'll try to quantify it better as someone who, and I'm not bragging here, easily has more time in a ring than most UFC fighters. I'm not saying I'm better than any particular UFC fighter, not at all. I'm not. But I've been doing it way longer than most of these guys, I've taught it professionally for years, so I'm just politely trying to give some perspective from someone with a ton of experience.
McGregor is not a good technical kick boxer. I know this because I've been fighting some of the best technical kick boxers in the world for years. I'm not saying he's bad, but he's far from great. However, me saying he's not a great kick boxer does not mean he's not a good fighter. Those two things aren't the same.
McGregor can scrap, and he's intimidating because he can take a beating. I'm not even saying that's a bad thing either - that's how I fight. I had this one dude I fought more times than I can fucking count, and he was a way better kick boxer than me. In every sense. He was more technical, more efficient, he in a biomechanical sense executed his strikes so well that he got the absolute highest output of power out of them. He was a better kick boxer, plain and simple. If you put him and I (him and I are good friends just to note), next to each other hitting mitts, and had one hundred kick boxing instructors watch us, 100 out of 100 of them would say he had a much more fundamental understanding of the inherent biomechanical framework of kick boxing. I have absolutely no problem admitting he's a better kick boxer than me.
However, he never beat me once.
The thing about fighting, is you have to remember... it's a fight. And there are some dudes - a lot of dudes - who totally fold despite how good they are when they have someone get in their face and throw down. This is actually the downfall of a lot of kick boxers in street fights. They can do crazy shit all day hitting mitts and bags, but when someone throws down and scraps with them and they're in a fight, they fall apart. The best thing you can do, in my opinion, if you want to be a successful fighter, is kick box with people that have no problem beating the ever living fuck out of you. Because you can go toe to toe with other super technical kick boxers that are playing the game, trying to read you and counter you, pick up on everything you're telegraphing, but when you have another kick boxer who is a really good kick boxer, who might not be as good as you but is still really good, but he's willy to just jump right into it with you and swallow some teeth in the process, you have a problem. And this obviously doesn't apply for everyone. Like an Anderson Silva level kick boxer is just so good it doesn't matter how much I want to scrap with him he's just going to out class me.
So with this dude I mentioned, despite how much better he was, I'd just get in his face every time we fought and it'd always end with him getting so disheartened that within a minute or two I was beating the ever living fuck out of him like it was a hockey fight. A lot of super technical kick boxers get into the (bad) habit of way too much so treating fighting like chess with people they fight that approach it the same way. Then they face someone like me who they punch in the face and I spit, kick them in the liver, and start donkey konging their head, pick them up and slam them on the ground, and tenderize them like meat. And they don't know how to deal with that level of aggression because of the way it's taught is like a board game and they don't expect someone to turn it into a back alley brawl. And they crumble when you do.
I live in the worst neighborhood in Boston and have gotten into tons of fights, and I'm also extremely small. I have a target on my chest because I look easy to pick on. I'm 5'9 and 120 pounds. Dudes think they're going to wreck me if I'm out at bars (not recently, but it's happened a lot). Most guys, if they try to hit you and you don't stop, and then you just come at them like a freight train, are going to absolutely fold. I'm not saying swing like an idiot, I'm a damn good kick boxer. But when people hit you and you don't stop, as long as you're smart enough and don't let them catch you on the chin or the temple, you're going to totally take the wind out of their sails. They're going to realize "oh man this guy can take a beating."
This is Connor McGregor. He's not a bad kick boxer. But he's by no means a great kick boxer. He's willing to scrap, and because of how dudes are trained, like I elaborated on, they'd totally fold under him. That's why he was so successful. Same thing, you could find a ton of kick boxing trainers, sit down and have them watch film of him, and while they'd say he wasn't bad, and he's even very good, he's not great. He's just so willing to throw down that people would start back pedaling, and then it was his time to shine because he was in his element and he'd throw them a beating.
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