Conor McGregor: I’d kill Floyd Mayweather “in less than 30 seconds”

If you thought, in the aftermath of his whirlwind “World Championship Tour”, Conor McGregor was going to disappear into a gym to prepare for his UFC 189 showdown with Jose Aldo, you were wrong. A couple of weeks removed from the hysteria of Dublin’s Convention Centre, McGregor remains seemingly ubiquitous.

In an interview with Chris Jones of Esquire this week, McGregor spoke about why he got into fighting; his proclivity for finding himself in fights as a youth – despite his wishes – and his desire to become equipped to deal with such circumstances.

“I seem to have a face—I seem to attract attention somehow,” McGregor told Jones. “For some reason, people want to try to come at me. They want to hit me. I just wanted people to leave me alone, basically. I didn’t get into this to be somebody. I got into it to feel comfortable in uncomfortable situations.”

McGregor, 26, started out as a kickboxer, then a boxer, before finally falling in love with the art of jujitsu. “It fascinated me then, and it fascinates me now,” he said. The proud Dubliner often talks about his most recent loss – a submission by arm-triangle choke – as a turning point in his development as a jujitsu player and as a fighter. “That ate me alive,” he recalled. “After that, I said I was going to fight to the death. You’re going to have to kill me.”

Now, McGregor maintains, one pugilistic discipline is not enough to get by in the fight game and that there is a distinct need to be well-rounded in modern-day mixed martial arts.

“I don’t look at a man who’s expert in one area as a specialist,” McGregor explained. “I look at him as a rookie in ten other areas. If you can box, what happens if I grab hold of your legs? If you put me face-to-face with Floyd Mayweather—pound-for-pound boxing’s best—if I fought Floyd, I would kill him in less than thirty seconds. It would take me less than thirty seconds to wrap around him like a boa constrictor and strangle him.”

When asked about the aspect of his game that has perhaps been most instrumental in his rapid ascent to stardom – his trash talk – McGregor didn’t mince his words.

“Trash talk? Smack talk? This is an American term that makes me laugh. I simply speak the truth. I’m an Irish man. We don’t give a fuck about feelings. We’ll tell you the truth. People ask me a question about somebody, I tell them the truth. I don’t have anything bad to say about Jose Aldo. It’s pretty plain and simple. His time is up. It’s done. There’s somebody ruthless coming to get him. There’s somebody cold coming to get him. I can look at him dead in the eye and say, It’s done. You’re over now. You’re a champion that nobody gave a fuck about. Nobody cared about him before I came along. Nobody cared about the division before I came along. He’s a decision machine. He can barely finish his dinner, never mind his opponent. And he’s fought bums. He’s fought little small bantamweights and he still can’t put them away. Now he’s coming in against a monster of a featherweight who hits like a truck. It’s over for him. I don’t need to say jackshit else. July is a wrap. It’s inevitable.”

McGregor has described dealing with the media as a discipline that fighters often neglect to develop and master. The Straight Blast Gym representative himself certainly can’t be accused of such neglect. Ostensibly just as at ease in front of the camera or behind the mic as he is in the cage, McGregor is a dream for a promoter like UFC President Dana White, who weighed in succinctly:

“He’s going to get everything he’s ever wanted.”