Conor McGregor may be one of the best fighters in the world right now, and that’s according to more people than just Conor McGregor. The man with the mouth also has the skills to back up his words, and has won 18 of his 20 fights, 16 by knockout. He faces his stiffest test this weekend against current featherweight champion Jose Aldo.
Is Conor worried about it? Nah. He says he’s gonna batter the guy who hasn’t lost in 10 years so badly he won’t answer the bell for the second round. That’s just the kind of confidence he has in his skills, and you may feel the same way after watching these GIFs of his best knockouts.
Here’s a young, beardless Conor McGregor putting the hurt on Steve O’Keefe with downward elbows in the British Cage Warriors promotion. This fight earned Conor a shot at the Cage Warriors featherweight championship, which he won.
He then fought Ivan Buchinger for the Cage Warriors lightweight championship belt and won that, too, with this beautifully timed counter, becoming the first fighter in Cage Warriors history to hold two belts simultaneously. He says he wants to do the same in the UFC, taking the 145-pound belt off Jose Aldo and then going after the 155-pound belt next.
After winning his titles in Cage Warriors, the UFC came knocking at his door. His first fight for the promotion was on the undercard of a small event in Sweden, but he made big waves with his quick knockout of Marcus Brimage in the first round.
Diego Brandao is a Brazilian brawler with dynamite in his hands, and he swore he’d expose Conor McGregor for the overhyped media creation he was. Instead, McGregor battered him from post to post and knocked him out brutally at the end of the first round. It was Conor’s first main-event for the UFC, and it took place in Dublin, Ireland, solidifying him as a star in his home country.
Dustin Poirier was another fighter who felt like Conor was all talk and no substance. Conor showed him otherwise, psyching him out mentally in the weeks leading up to the fight and then using Poirier’s sloppy aggression in the cage to force mistakes and make him pay. In the end, Poirier, at the time one of the top prospects in the division, didn’t even last two minutes with McGregor. Conor was now a legit top0five contender.
McGregor had faced brawlers and power punchers, but never someone as technical as kickboxer Dennis Siver. Siver refused to engage in any of McGregor’s antics, but it didn’t matter in the end … Conor had an extra inch and a half of reach on the compact German and beat him to a pulp with flashy kicks and unrelenting body shots. This fight earned him a title shot against featherweight champ Jose Aldo.
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But Aldo ended up pulling out of his title fight with McGregor two weeks before the date. Rather than cancel the event and wait, McGregor said he’d fight the next best guy in the division, Chad Mendes, so long as an interim featherweight title was on the line. Many thought it was pure folly … Chad Mendes was a top-level wrestler, and McGregor had never faced anyone with his skill set before. Conor was taken down in the first round, but managed to neutralize Mendes’ top game. In the second, he wore his opponent down with kicks to the body before going in for the kill, taking out Mendes and retaining his right to fight Jose Aldo for the real featherweight title.
And that’s where we’re at now. Conor McGregor vs. Jose Aldo at UFC 194 is the biggest fight in UFC featherweight history, and it’s promised to be a barnburner of epic proportions. The two guys have been getting in each others’ faces for more than a year, but now it’s time to settle it in the cage. Don’t miss out … this is one for the ages.