Hafthor Bjornsson, best known as The Mountain from Game of Thrones, is a busy man. When he’s not pulling tractors in commercials or beating his own strongman world records, he’s in Ireland filming season six of the massive hit show. And when he had a little time off from that, he visited the Straight Blast Gym in Dublin — home to UFC interim featherweight champ Conor McGregor — for some impromptu sparring.
Here’s Conor McGregor explaining how the video of two going at it on the mats came about (video via MMA Junkie):
“It was a lot of fun. That’s a big man! Six-foot-9, 400 pounds, and I still folded him up. I was hitting him with some shots – I had to hit him with some shots. He was hitting me, trying to hit me as well. People say ‘Oh, he was taking it easy.’ He tried to grab me and tried to pull my head off and I defended – freed the head. I was like, ‘this motherf-cker is so big, I have to start smacking him a few to the body.’ ”
“It started because you ever see that famous Bruce Lee film with Kareem Abdul Jabbar where they face off? Let’s take a cool picture like that. And then we squared as if we were gonna do it and all of a sudden he’s bouncing and I’m bouncing. Next thing you know we’re having a full bare knuckle body shot fight. … But I sunk him good. Not even a Mountain can take these shots from me.”
“He’s a great guy, he’s a cool guy. Like most of the Icelandics, they’re laid back and cool people.”
Conor is lucky Hafthor is that cool, or he might have waited until the UFC fighter let his guard down to take his revenge. This isn’t Westeros and you can’t just crush a man’s skull with your bare hands over a bit of disrespect. But it still takes some stones to start punching up one of the world’s strongest men on a whim – something McGregor has never lacked.
He’ll be stepping into the cage against featherweight champ Jose Aldo this Saturday at UFC 194. Aldo hasn’t lost in over 10 years, but McGregor is talking about beating him so bad he won’t be able to answer the bell for the second round. As the story above proves, Conor is a little crazy. But he keeps on backing the smack up by defeating all who come before him. The Mountain couldn’t get a hold of him … maybe Aldo won’t be able to either. McGregor will have to be careful though … I hear 145 pounders move a bit faster than 400 pound behemoths.
(Via MMA Junkie)