Conor McGregor: UFC 189 Body Shots Were For ‘Weak’ Jose Aldo

UFC interim featherweight champion Conor McGregor headlined a monumental card in Las Vegas in the form of UFC 189. The massive PPV (pay-per-view) event is reported to have hit 1 million buys, with Robbie Lawler and Rory MacDonald with a co-main titole tilt for the ages. The main event was a story of McGregor’s striking and Chad Mendes’ wrestling, and it was the Irish star who wound up winning with a second round TKO, but only after being thoroughly controlled throughout round one.

There’s a common opinion circulating that ‘Money’ would do better with a full camp, as the Team Alpha Male product only took the fight on two weeks notice, but ‘The Notorious’ doesn’t see it that way. Of course Mendes stepped up to an impromptu title fight with Jose Aldo injured in training, but ‘C-McG’ believes the result would have been the same either way. Check out what McGregor told ESPN’s SportsCenter, as transcribed by MMAJunkie:

“To the naked eye it seemed like a tough contest, and I get a giggle out of supposed experts in the field of fighting when they speak of his two-week training camp or his lack of preparation. To the trained eye, you understand what you are witnessing. You are witnessing ruthless bodywork – ruthless body shooting where I teeped him into his windpipe. I cracked him into his ribs, and every time those shots dug in deep, they take rounds of you. There is no coming back from clean bodywork. It can render you useless and that’s what happened.”

“He came out, I butchered his body, I rearranged his intestines, I stayed safe on the bottom when we were in those positions, I elbowed the top of his crown, I done damage and remained efficient then I rose to my feet, went back to the work on the body then his body gave up at that time. Then I punched his jaw across his face. To the trained eye, it was a ruthless performance by me. It was clinical bodywork, which was the deciding factor in the fight. It does not matter if he had a 100-week camp. It would not have made any difference. Me and him know the shape his body was in during those exchanges.”

McGregor’s striking game was certainly better than Mendes’ on the night of UFC 189, but how about the absent ‘Scarface’? McGregor says he was sending a message to the stricken Brazilian boss with his body shots in Sin City:

“Another reason I went to work on his body was because of Jose Aldo’s weak body,” McGregor said. “I knew his ribs were in pain, so I wanted to hit Chad’s body knowing that Jose was sitting under the duvet peaking above his duvet covers watching the fight, trembling as every shot to the body landed. It was another reason why I lit up his body.”

“I am now the world champion. You claim it’s the interim champion, but Jose went running. Jose’s a scared little man who did not show up to fight and sat under his covers praying for Chad Mendes to win. His whole team were praying for Chad Mendes to win so he would not face me. But his prayers went unanswered and I dominated and won. Now I am the featherweight world champion of the UFC. We will schedule a fight against Jose in the future and see how it plays out. Hopefully he stops running and man’s up and let’s do this damn fight.”

“The previous fight was the biggest event in UFC history,” McGregor said. “.2 million gate, cleared 1 million pay-per-view buys, it slots very high on the list of highest MGM (Grand Garden Arena) gates just below Mike Tyson and Juan Manuel Marquez. It also beat that pay-per-view number. So that was a tremendous event and one of the biggest, if not the biggest in history. So it’s only right. We don’t stay the same. We don’t go backwards, we always go forwards. That’s what my business partner Mr. Lorenzo Fertitta always says.”

McGregor is his usual charismatic self, do you think he’ll be the winner of the eventual title unification bout with Aldo, or is this the pinnacle of the Irish sensation’s rise through the rankings?