What now, Conor McGregor?
No opponent has brutalised Conor McGregor more than the fame he craves, but cannot seem to find a way to live with.
He wasn’t known as a fighting man, but Oscar Wilde did warn us - the only two tragedies in life are not getting what you want, and getting it.
During his meteoric rise we got used to seeing Conor McGregor sitting atop the cage, UFC gold outstretched, beaming and dreaming of the riches that were about to come his way.
The money is in the bank, but nowadays he no longer sits on top of the fence at the end of his fights; instead he usually left slumped against the same fence he once bestrode, a broken man beaten down by his fame and the impossible expectations that it brings.
There is little sympathy for him.
In trying to live up to the wave of hype that he rode to stardom, he has become a parody of himself. His skills are a shadow of their former sharpness, his invincible aura a crumbled edifice, and deep down he must know that it didn’t have to be this way.
For McGregor it was never enough to rise to the top of this most brutal and unforgiving of sports; he wanted to transcend it, to take it to places and levels it had never seen before, and he did that.
But once that is done it has to be maintained, and that requires discipline and order, not chaos and anger.
When you get to the top of any profession there is a tendency to think that you know it all, and that it is within your power to bend the world to your will. At best, that power is fleeting; at worst, a dangerous chimera.
McGregor has been let down by those around him, the yes-men and women that have ignored the darkness that emanates from him while they quietly draw a salary out of his pocket. No-one wants to piss off the goose that keeps laying the golden eggs.
His bravado and their cowardice has allowed him to believe that he is protected by the most splendid suit of armour, when in truth he has been naked for years.
He is not the first, and he won’t be the last. This is the way of combat sports, where no-one bothers to learn the lessons of those who have gone before them, instead insisting on making the same mistakes over and over and over again.
On Saturday he became the fighting version of Elvis in his Las Vegas era, a superstar trading on a dim and distant past, one who was once young and beautiful but whose star had slipped, leaving him angry and bitter yet with no choice but to go out and perform, because without the spotlight there is nothing but a fast-dwindling pile of money and the whispers of people who once called themselves your friends saying you’re past it, a busted flush, another bum on the desert’s boulevard of broken dreams.
Notice how the meteoric rise in no longer discussed in awed tones, and how the dangerous snake-oil nonsense about the “law of attraction” and manifesting success into being is never mentioned any more, the fleeting myths busted by the fists of other, hungrier men.
Can McGregor come back from breaking his ankle and losing three of his last four fights in the UFC? Probably.
Should he?
That’s another question entirely, but the answer doesn’t matter.
Whether he ever gets back in the octagon again or not is a moot point. For the last six or seven years, Conor McGregor has been trying to find a way to live with himself, and so far he has come up short.
The flamboyant spending, the partying, the attention of women and others have not made him whole. What we mistake for brash self-confidence is in fact the opposite; a man hoping that the glare of the bling will hide the gaping, painful holes that money or fame or power cannot fill.
Fighting no longer matters.
The only thing that matters is recovery - recovery from the wounds of fighting, and the deeper wounds of fame and of notoriety.
This will require healing and restitution of the wrongs that have been done, both to others and to McGregor himself.
All of them.
The bruises and the broken bones will heal, but the emptiness a man feels when he puts his head on the pillow at night and examines his conscience is not as easily remedied, and in the end it is truly all that matters.
All money and fame and power can offer us is a softer pillow to lay our head on when the hard voices come to reckon with us and our misdeeds.
And that is the hardest fight any of us will ever have to face.
I think if he wants to recover what he had in the fighting world needs to recover and after that try to travel to places like thailand, to recover the love for the martial arts, he got blinded by the money and fame, he was a good martial artist, always thinking in movement, taking tae kwon do lessons, always self motivated, when he became like all the other fighters he started being beated, he needs to recover that love for the martial arts, start exploring again
Worst take