UFC 202: Nate Diaz vs Conor McGregor Toe to Toe Preview – Complete Breakdown

Conor McGregor fights Nate Diaz at welterweight in the main event of UFC 202: McGregor vs. Diaz II on August 20th, 2016, at the

Single sentence summary:

Phil: McGregor takes another shot at his white whale and tries not to get dragged back down into the depths.

David: Nate looks to take another shot at roping the dope wrapped in the same Irish zig zags he rolled him in.

Stats?

Record: Nate Diaz 19-10 Conor McGregor 19-3

Odds: Nate Diaz+115 Conor McGregor -125

History lesson / introduction to the fighters

Phil: Nate Diaz, welcome to stardom. He’s still definitively the B-side in this particular fight, but now the big money fights he’s been hunting for for years have fallen into his lap. It wasn’t that long that Diaz was being laughably bumped from the UFC’s lightweight rankings due to “inactivity” and getting 30k to show. Now, he holds the whip hand and a win over the man who is debatably the UFC’s biggest homegrown draw.

David: We all laud Robbie Lawler for what he’s done: staying relevant in the grandest of ways without reinventing himself. But where Lawler commands respect and reverence, I feel like Nate is still seen as a curiosity. Yet I’d argue he’s accomplished exactly what Lawler has. In different ways? Sure. But when you look at just the sheer physics of it all, they’re remarkably similar. Robbie just happened to get the breaks he needed.

Phil: This had to happen to McGregor sooner or later. He simply rolled the dice too many times, on short notice changes of opponent, on fighting injured, on disregarding weight classes. Was it awesome? Yes it was, but it always had to end like this. If he’d beaten Diaz, he probably would have gone on to fight Robbie Lawler. Could he have beaten him? Maybe, but then could he have beaten Tyron Woodley? Or Wonderboy? No, eventually something was going to bring McGregor down. You can’t keep moving up forever. As it turned out, the ascension got stopped quicker than most people predicted. Now he has an interesting task ahead of him.

David: Conor is still kind of “unproven” in the grand scheme of things. Nothing will ever take away from his KO over Aldo, but quick finishes do take away slices of narrative: how does Conor react through three rounds against an opponent in his face, and with equal amounts of talent? This isn’t a criticism of Conor’s validity. That’s sherdog.net shit. It’s a question of degree. I’m still a little traditional and would like to see him either defend the featherweight belt, or get rid of it, but then the UFC wouldn’t be able to market their favorite star as a certified golden boy.

What are the stakes?

Phil: About as big as they get. No belt on the line, but whether Conor goes 0-2 to Diaz is more important than any belt, from the perspective of the UFC at least. It’s sounded like the Irish contingent that followed him out to UFC 202 might have diminished, and that’s not surprising. A lot of the mainstream attention came from the impression of invincibility; how he called his shots and then made them happen.

He’s less of the cultural zeitgeist than, say, Rousey, whose rise coincided with third wave feminism coming of age as a marketable commodity. More of a traditional sports star, and in these cases a Mystic Mac sells much more readily than a Conventional Conor. And that’s if he stays in the sport.

David: Conor is probably one loss away from entering some sort of weird Brock Lesnar territory. Now before Conor’s fans lose their lucky charms, keep in mind this isn’t a direct comparison. Not only that but I’ve always held a healthy respect for how unique Brock is in the sport. Nor does his steroid bust taint my image of him. That the two potentially represent shortlived Zuffa …

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