Jose Aldo vs. Conor McGregor: Who Will Become the Wrestler?
There has obviously been no end of name calling between Jose Aldo and Conor McGregor during their lengthy, well-publicized feud over the UFC featherweight title.
As the two archrivals continue to skip gleefully down the path toward an epic grudge match and a mutually beneficial payday at UFC 189, theyโve hurled every offensive and profane thing they can think of at each other.
Frankly, we wouldnโt have it any other way.
Of late, however, the discourse has gotten truly nasty. As the build to this fight enters the home stretch, Aldo and McGregor have each resorted to the vilest, most insulting slur in all of MMA marketing.
They've called each other the dirtiest word of them all: wrestler.
โI feel after the first exchange, heโll turn into a grappler,โ sneered McGregor, during a media scrum in Aldoโs home country of Brazil while on the pairโs gala World Tour. โOne-hundred percent.โ
Itโs funny to think a sport that is at least 50 percent wrestling would reserve such disdain for words like grappler, but the implication here is clear. You can tell this assessment of the 145-pound championโs skills is meant to be particularly cutting because the loquacious McGregor needs just over a dozen words to deploy it.
This is a staple of the 26-year-old Irishmanโs pre-fight banter. Ask him something about himself and his answers sometimes stretch into soliloquies. Bring up his opponent and the retorts get much shorter, more biting. McGregor barks a curt one-liner from behind his black Ray Bans and then juts his chin as if to say, thatโs all Iโve got to say about that.
Credit Aldoโs camp for being a little bit more descriptive on the subject. When asked to respond to McGregorโs claims that heโll force Aldo to abandon the striking game, coach Andre Pederneiras this week told MMA Fighting.com's Guilherme Cruz that the challenger has things the wrong way around.
And he didnโt restrict himself to 140 characters or less:
"In my mind, Conor will be the one to become a wrestler. I believe McGregor will become a wrestler in the middle of the fight. Where he believes heโs good at, in the middle of the fight he will realize heโs not that good. He will try to grapple with Aldo. He doesnโt have an idea who heโs going to fight. He will go for takedowns during the fight.
"
Whether you take the short way or the long way around the topic, the meaning is the same. Both Aldo and McGregor are fearsome and prideful stand-up fighters, and each believes his opponent is headed for a shock.
Technically flawless punching combinations and crushing leg kicks have typified Aldoโs recent UFC career. He hasnโt lost in nearly a decade and has finished 14 of his 25 career wins via some form of knockout. If his numbers have slacked off a bit of lateโjust two stoppages during seven fights in the Octagonโitโs likely because heโs spent the last four years taking on the rest of the best featherweights in the world.
McGregor, meanwhile, is known for an uncanny knack at guiding his opponents into his straight left hand. A relative neophyte who made his promotional debut just over two years ago, heโs an enormous 145-pounder who seems to get exponentially better every time we see him. So far, heโs ended four of his five UFC bouts with early knockouts, though over a far less impressive array of opponents.
Both are secure in their beliefs that the other guy has never fought someone like them before. Both are certain that when confronted with the extent of his own foolishness in the cage on July 11, their opponent will quickly lose his taste for the kickboxing game.
The numbers, however, tell us that neither one of these men is particularly likely to abruptly turn into Dan Gable.
According to the UFCโs official statistics, Aldo enjoys 72 percent โtakedown accuracyโ after landing 13 of 18 total attempts. Thatโs actually more than you might expect from a KO artist like the champion, but 10 of those takedown tries came in just two fightsโAldoโs particularly tough decision win over Mark Hominick at UFC 129 and his fourth-round stoppage of Chan Sung Jung at UFC 163.
In total, heโs opted to try to take things to the ground in just four of his fights. The rest stayed on the feet, where he largely dominated.
UFC statisticians say McGregor is 5-of-6 in career takedown attempts, for an accuracy rate of 83 percent. Like Aldo, though, he landed the bulk of those attempts (four) during just a single fightโhis three-round decision victory over Max Holloway in August 2013.
The fact of the matter is that both Aldo and McGregor have been too overwhelmingly good at their disciplines of choice to waste much time with anything else. That alone makes the point of their competing boasts clear. They contend theyโll be among the first to force the other guy out of his comfort zone and into a fainthearted tactical Hail Mary.
Because of the way UFC ownership has long marketed its bouts, the decision to wrestle is often cast as the cowardly move. Itโs a laughable construct, considering it is precisely wrestling that puts the mixed in mixed martial arts, but the bias is so pervasive that neither McGregor nor Pederneiras has to explain the meaning of their above quotes.
If either Aldo or McGregor opts for a grappling match, it will be considered unmanly. Especially by the other guy. Inferring that your opponent will choose to wrestle you is also a clever way of saying, I might lose the fight, but I sure wonโt lose the war.
Itโs all blather, really. All puffery. All posturing.
Six months after the bad blood is finally settled, nobody will look at the reigning featherweight champ and think he got there through less-than-admirable means.
Still, suggesting it would be spineless for your opponent to do anything but stand in the middle of the cage and meet you head-to-head looks good in print. Not to mention, both McGregor and Aldo believe it might pressure the other into the sort of fight they think theyโll win.
Even if the taunts and brags are empty, only one of them can be rightโand thatโs just one of the things that will make this matchup so much fun, once the name-calling portion of the performance is complete.
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