Conor McGregor vs. Jose Aldo and the Power of a Great Beef in MMA

Before things get any crazier, pause for a moment to consider what Conor McGregor has already accomplished.

As McGregor takes the cage on Saturday to fight Jose Aldo for the featherweight title at UFC 194, it’s worth remembering that seven years ago he was working as a plumber, changing pipes and unclogging toilets at home in Dublin.

The rise, you might say, has been meteoric. Two-and-a-half years and six fights into his UFC career, he stands on the brink of history.

McGregor will find himself across the cage from the greatest 145-pound MMA fighter of all time this weekend with the chance to validate the self-promotional house of cards he’s built himself since arriving on the big stage.

One of the UFC’s largest pay-per-view audiences of the year is expected to tune in to see if he can do it.

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He’ll likely net a seven-figure payday from the event and already has potential big-money fights lined up for later in two different weight classes.

Maybe—just maybe—he’ll leave Las Vegas with the actual, bona fide UFC title around his waist, too.

His fight against Aldo will cap a week during which the UFC puts on three events on three consecutive nights. There will be around 30 fights, all leading up to their long-awaited clash.

It’s almost enough to make you think McGregor has already won.

All of this is because of him, after all.

All because of McGregor and his mouth.

Of course, he couldn’t have done it without Aldo (7-0 UFC, 25-1 overall). The Brazilian’s spotless six-year, 10-fight reign over the featherweight division dating back to the old WEC days made him the perfect target. His ice-cold demeanor and assassin’s glare made him the perfect foil.

But, really, McGregor gets the credit here. He’s almost single-handedly launched their beef into the annals of the UFC’s all-time greats. We haven’t even seen the fight yet and it already belongs right up there with Anderson Silva vs. Chael Sonnen and Tito Ortiz vs. Ken Shamrock.

McGregor’s unorthodox, left-handed striking style has rocketed him to 6-0 in the Octagon (18-2 overall), but it was his work on the microphone that made him a revelation.

From the start, the Irishman seemed to understand innately what Sonnen took nearly a decade in professional fighting to figure out: Being one of the best trash-talkers in the world trumps almost everything else.

McGregor has blathered and fumed and by turns waxed philosophical throughout his short run in the UFC. From the beginning, it appeared as though his bosses knew he was going to be something special.

Fans seemed to know it, too, turning out in droves both in his native Ireland and abroad to establish him as one of the biggest stars in the sport in record time. The work he’s done comes laced with echoes of Sonnen—who spun the same variety of verbal magic en route to three UFC title shots before multiple drug-test failures ended his career.

So Sonnen knows from whence he speaks. Now an analyst for ESPN, he was in Las Vegas this week for the UFC 194 press conference. He told MMAFighting.com’s Ariel Helwani that McGregor vs. Aldo reminded of him of the work he did opposite Silva before their two meetings at UFCs 117 and 148.

Sonnen also didn’t issue any rave reviews for the job Aldo has done to help:

"

It’s a one-man show. I’m watching Conor. We’re all tuning in for Conor. ... It’s the McGregor Show, [but] it shouldn’t have to be that way. ... He’s got a dance partner that signed a contract to do a certain job, and this is part of it. If I was going to ask a question today, that would have been my question to Jose Aldo. I would have said, "Jose, what are you doing here? Why did you show up today?"

"

It’s true that Aldo has mostly served as McGregor’s straight man during the lead-up to UFC 194, albeit a stunningly dangerous one. The longtime champion seethed his way through the “world tour” the UFC sent the two athletes on during the run-up to their originally scheduled meeting in July.

McGregor seemed to be having the time of his life on that ambitious press junket. Aldo appeared to be plotting his murder.

The spectacle climaxed at a press conference in Dublin, where scores of Irishmen—some of them already pretty far into their cups—turned out to call Aldo all sorts of names. McGregor ate it up, and near the end of the proceedings, he crafted what will no doubt be the iconic moment of this epic rivalry: He jumped over the podium and grabbed Aldo’s championship belt from his side of the dais.

By comparison, the lead-up to UFC 194 has been quite staid. To its credit—perhaps the first time in its history where it has erred on the side of subtlety—the UFC realized it couldn’t just call a do-over on all of McGregor’s antics.

That didn’t stop him from totally hijacking the organization’s “Go Big” press conference in mid-September. McGregor effectively took over that event, blasting Aldo, lightweight champion Rafael dos Anjos and 155-pound No. 1 contender Donald Cerrone.

It was a smart play by McGregor, but maybe also the first sign that he was growing beyond the UFC’s control. In the wake of that appearance, he’s made grandiose statements about the size of his next fight contract and recently took to his Instagram to post, “I am not a company man. I am the company.”

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Now comes Aldo, who—to this juncture—appears to be the only person with any hope of actually slowing the McGregor hype train.

He’s approached this feud with equal parts bemusement and frustration. As Sonnen noted, he’s been mostly tightlipped. He pulled out of their first intended meeting at UFC 189 with a rib injury, which McGregor and his supporters called cowardice, but he’s mostly radiated quiet confidence.

Not even MMA’s best technical analysts—like Bleacher Report’s Patrick Wyman and Fightland’s Jack Slack—seem confident in the way this fight will go.

If Aldo manages to be the first to slay McGregor on the big stage, it may do nothing besides serve as a reminder of where the posturing ends and the actual skills begin.

But it won’t be the end of McGregor. If anything, Sonnen’s career stands as a testament to that. When you can talk a good game, matchmakers have a tendency to keep coming back for more.

That’s where McGregor’s true greatness lies. No matter what happens to him against Aldo, he’s fashioned himself into a promotional juggernaut. The big fights won’t stop coming for him, even if it turns out he’s not up to backing up the beef.