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McGregor, not one to pass up a verbal battle, fired right back, saying, “Diego is one of the most feared guys in the division. He’s a bad, bad man until the door shuts, until it’s time to fight. Then he crumbles, then he’s like a little boy in there. He’s a tough guy outside, but when it’s time to fight he doesn’t show up. So July 19th, we’ll see.”
After just two fights on the big stage, it was clear that McGregor was settling into the headliner’s role. In fact, when I spoke to him, he was in the middle of getting ready for a training session. I jokingly asked him if I was still going to get some good material from him since he was preoccupied.
“Always,” said McGregor. “Wait until July 19th and you’ll see good material, material that hasn’t been seen before.”
Yeah, he had that star thing already, and you just knew that being the center of attention wasn’t going to concern him. And if you didn’t know, he’d tell you.
“It’s just another day for me,” said the then 26-year-old Irishman. “I’ve been the star since Day One. It’s just another day in the life of a king, and it feels normal. Everything is the same. In my head it was always like this, no different. And I’m going to perform like that as well. People think there’s pressure; I don’t feel pressure, I never did. I’ve been in a UFC main event every fight of my career.”
Yet before McGregor took to the Octagon, three of his teammates would make the walk, starting with unbeaten flyweight Paddy Holohan, who was making his UFC debut against Josh Sampo. Win, and the energy stays high in the locker room. Lose, and that starts the night off on a downer for the team and the crowd.
Holohan needed just over three minutes to submit Sampo. SBG 1, World 0.
“Paddy Holohan goes out and stops a dangerous guy in the first round, and that kind of set the tone for the whole night,” said SBG Ireland head coach John Kavanagh. “Now everybody’s walking 12-feet tall.”
Including Kavanagh, who had been down this road before when it came to having multiple fighters on the same card.
“I did prepare myself for it,” he said. “I do a lot of regional shows here in Ireland and around Europe, and it’s not uncommon for me to have five-plus fighters on a card, so I do have kind of a system down. Each fighter has a second that stays with him the whole time, and I have to give a big shout out to those guys. They’re the ones who take care of the warm-up, getting the ice, and doing all those type of jobs. I’m the first, so I’ll just come in and grab them, but it’s actually those guys that have gotten the guy ready while I was out at the previous fight.”
And while some wondered whether SBG could go 4-0 on the night, Kavanagh had no such doubts.
“Of course I expected nothing less than four wins, but I was aware that things can happen, and if you’re walking back with an unhappy fighter, you don’t want to walk into the same changing room and change the energy,” said Kavanagh, who had Cathal Pendred up next.
Pendred, a graduate of The Ultimate Fighter 19, faced off with castmate Mike King and the two proceeded to deliver a Fight of the Night battle won by Pendred via second-round submission. Two up two down, and then Nelson added a third submission win to the team tally by finishing Zak Cummings in the second round.
The only thing left was for McGregor to close the show.
“I had to be careful that after Gunni’s fight, for example, there was very much a party atmosphere in the room, and I had to kick everybody out of it and say, ‘It’s not party time yet. There’s still a job here to do,’” said Kavanagh. “And you can imagine what Paddy Holohan is like after having the night he did, and I had to tell him to put on a t-shirt and disappear and party when this is over because we have another fight to go. But we have a system down, and the guys who helped me did an incredible job of keeping everybody on point and focused.”
Then McGregor did his thing in spectacular fashion as the crowd shook the O2 down to its foundations. The Takeover was complete. And all the coach wanted to do was relax.
“When it was all over,” laughed Kavanagh, “Then I went back and I collapsed.”
Later, Kavanagh was able to put the whole night in perspective.
“Unfortunately, I come from an engineering background, not an English Lit background where I can use nice vocabulary to try and explain the unexplainable,” he laughs. “But it’s a dream come true. It would be hard to top this with one of my guys winning a belt in Vegas. Although that’s the ultimate goal and that will be a very, very special night, I don’t think this night will ever be eclipsed. Four fighters, four wins, main event, co-main event, my mother and father in the crowd. My dad is 64 and he said it was the greatest night of his life. It was special.”
It was special. There are no other words to describe it.
Here’s how we called the UFC Dublin card that night in 2014…