Ricardo Lamas Thinks He Bothered Conor McGregor

It’s hardly a secret that UFC featherweight sensation Conor McGregor has ruffled the feathers of more than a few of the 145-pound division’s top contenders.

Perhaps the man whose skin he’s gotten under the most is none other than former title contender Ricardo Lamas, who will take his No. 3 ranking into his fight against Chad Mendes in the main event of April 4’s UFC Fight Night 63 from Fairfax, Virginia.

But unlike most of the other top featherweights contenders who have been made the brunt of McGregor’s jokes, Lamas fought back with a satirical video of his own. Mocking McGregor with his now-infamous “Conrad McGillicutty” skit, Lamas became the first man to truly stick it to “Notorious” in the media.

Speaking during a recent appearance on this week’s Submission Radio, “The Bully” noted that he believes he truly got under McGregor’s skin by simply doing what the Irish trash talker has been doing to everyone else:

“I think it definitely bothered him, and that was kind of the point. You know, he’s always one that talks trash about other people and he doesn’t like it too much when the tables are turned, so it was good to give him a dose of his own medicine.”

“The Bully” knows that his video at least got under the skin of McGregor’s teammate, UFC lightweight Paddy Hollohan, who apparently approached Lamas with a garbled bit of backlash for the McGillicutty spoof:

“I didn’t really know what he was saying. Yeah, it was quite a thick Irish accent. The only thing I got, in the beginning he said that video was “shite”, so I knew he didn’t like the video too much, but after that it was just a blur of question marks in my head. I didn’t know what he was saying. So it wasn’t really awkward for me, it was….he might as well have been speaking French or something because I had no idea what he was complaining about.”

All joking aside, however, Lamas may raise a good point, as McGregor’s prior opponents at featherweight weren’t exactly the greatest wordsmiths.

Max Holloway is a great fighter but he’s also a quiet, respectful, young combatant, Diego Brandao is from Brazil and English isn’t his first language, Dustin Poirier has always been a soft-spoken fighter, and Dennis Siver is from Germany and also not known for any semblance of smack talk.

Truth be told, McGregor has never been matched up against an opponent who can match him word-for-word, and while that may be nearly impossible given his once-in-a-lifetime way with words, he doesn’t have one now, either.

He’s currently on a long-winded 10-city UFC 189 World Tour with dominant champ Jose Aldo, another fighter who doesn’t speak English as his primary language (and something that has probably held him back from being as big a star as he could be).

There’s no question that McGregor has commanded one of the most dynamic styles of MMA trash talk that the sport has ever seen, but he hasn’t exactly been pitted up against the best challengers in that regard.

Lamas may indeed fit that bill in the near future, yet with designs on another title shot should he get past Mendes, he doesn’t think that he and McGregor’s paths will cross all that soon. Speaking in his Conrad McGillicutty voice, Lamas gave his prediction for McGregor’s fight with Aldo from a first-person perspective:

“I see myself getting punched in the face a lot. That’s about it.”