During a recent UFC 205 conference call, Conor McGregor took his smack talk where few fighters have gone before: he brought Eddie Alvarez’s family into it. The brash Irishman declared “I’m going to really, truly rearrange his facial structure. His wife and kids won’t recognize him again.”
Those comments were probably designed to rile Eddie Alvarez up and get into his head. But as far as the scrappy Philadelphia born fighter is concerned, it’s a sign that McGregor desperately wants him off his game by fight night.
“This guy is so offensive minded and never on the defense, that whenever you put him on the defense he gets so flustered and so upset,” Alvarez said in the latest UFC Embedded video. “At a certain point in the press conference he got desperate and started talking about my wife and kids and things like that. And for me, it’s just a sign of desperation. You don’t talk about another man’s family unless you’re through the roof pissed off.”
“Just to see him cross that … it’s good. It’s a good sign for me. He’s already on tilt.”
As far as how he sees the fight going, Eddie has been saying since the fight was announced that Conor doesn’t have the gas tank to beat him.
“He is a tough guy in the beginning rounds of the bout,” Alvarez told UFC.com. “But at eight minutes, even if he’s dominating, he doesn’t like to fight past that and he doesn’t like to get into a fight. He likes to dominate and he’s a little bit of a frontrunner. Those eight minutes should be a bit doubtful for him. That’s how I feel those eight minutes will go, that we’re going to implant nothing but doubt inside his head constantly, and I don’t think he’ll do well in the face of that.”
Alvarez might be talking about a different McGregor, though. The Conor that only lasted 8 minutes was the one that was defeated by Nate Diaz. Since then, McGregor redoubled his efforts at the gym and locked in his nutrition. In his rematch with Nate, he managed to pull out the fight in the fifth due to his enhanced gas tank.
Will that tank last him through 25 minutes of Eddie Alvarez pressure? That’s the question we’ll find the answer to this Saturday night in New York City.