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Message: [QUOTE="OzExorcist, post: 3205501, member: 23910"] I agree with the broad principle of not getting carried away - this obviously wasn't a dominant performance. For my money that's part of McGregor's appeal by the way: you've often got no idea whether he's going to get the win or not. From the Mendes fight onwards there's been a [B]big[/B] chance of him losing every time he steps in the cage. That makes his fights way more interesting than, say, Jon Jones putting a beatdown on whoever was next on the list during his championship run. I disagree with Diaz being "hand picked" though. Someone like Dennis Siver was hand picked: Diaz was just the preferable option from the two or three guys who were available to fight on 11 days notice. You're right, the narrative going in was that he was meant to deal with Diaz much easier than he did in either fight. The style matchup was always problematic for him though, and both fights obviously bore that out. I agree, his ground game is probably underrated by a lot of people at this point - purely because a lot of people don't think he has one at all, which is just silly. That pass on Siver is especially pretty (albeit against a guy who had been rocked, and I don't think is a grappling powerhouse to begin with). Obviously what those GIFs don't show is things like all the time he spent underneath Mendes unable to do anything: IIRC McGregor was only able to escape when Mendes made a mistake trying to pass? If Mendes had've just stayed in guard and kept throwing strikes, McGregor would have been under him until the bell, losing the round. It was a good escape, he capitalised on the opportunity as soon as it presented itself, but at the same time he's obviously no Gunnar Nelson or Demian Maia on the ground. FWIW I think the same is probably true of a lot of top-level UFC fighters, people just like to go on about it in Conor's case. Robbie Lawler is hardly a wizard on the ground, for example. Jedrzejczyk is the same. [/QUOTE]

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