17

For a long time I had aspired to have fighters competing regularly in the UFC in different parts of the world. When I arrived back from Las Vegas on the Wednesday afternoon after UFC 189, jet-lagged and emotionally drained, I was slightly regretting the fact that those goals were coming to fruition.

I had twenty hours back home in Dublin before returning to the airport to head for Glasgow, where Paddy Holohan was scheduled to face English veteran Vaughan Lee at UFC Fight Night 72 on Saturday, 18 July 2015. Not long before the fight with Paddy was announced, Vaughan had actually been planning to join SBG. He came over for a while and even did some training with Paddy. But Vaughan was planning to move down to the flyweight division from bantamweight, which put him on a potential collision course with Paddy, so nothing more came of it. Now they would be up against each other in Glasgow.

Vaughan is a great competitor, very durable and experienced, and he had already faced top guys like TJ Dillashaw and Raphael Assunção. However, having trained with him, Paddy was supremely confident, and so was I. I expected Paddy to finish him and he was close to doing so on a couple of occasions, but in the end we had to settle for a very comprehensive win on the scorecards, with the judges calling it 30–27 across the board. The win took Paddy to 3–1 in the UFC. He had responded brilliantly to the first defeat of his career the previous October and there was now a real sense of momentum behind him.

When I returned home from Glasgow, I finally felt like I had a chance to take a little breather and assess everything that had taken place in the previous fortnight. After each UFC win, the popularity and visibility of MMA in Ireland just got bigger. It was particularly noticeable on the back of Conor’s win against Chad Mendes. Ireland was officially the home of a UFC belt. Only three other European countries – Poland, the Netherlands and Belarus, thanks to Joanna Je˛drzejczyk, Bas Rutten and Andrei Arlovski – have been able to say that.

It’s a little family tradition now that we all meet up at the Glenside pub in Rathfarnham on Sunday afternoons. I’d really missed those occasions while I was away in Vegas, so it was great to get back from Glasgow in time to join the family there, with Conor’s belt in tow. Everybody in the pub came over to extend their congratulations, as they offered to buy us drinks and took pictures with the belt, and the owner brought us in behind the bar for a photo; but for me the reaction of my mam and dad was possibly the most satisfying part of the victory. They were just incredibly proud. Being able to enjoy an achievement with your family is priceless.

For Conor, simple things like making a shopping trip to Dublin city centre had already become complicated undertakings which required a driver and bodyguards. Now even I was being recognized often on the same streets where I had been completely anonymous for most of my life. That took a while to get used to, but it’s always nice to receive people’s support wherever you go throughout the city and country. It was becoming common to hear a ‘Howya, John?’ as I walked down the road, or a beep from a passing car. On the short walk between my apartment and the gym, I pass a primary school. After the Mendes fight, the kids in the schoolyard began to shout their encouragement when they spotted me on the way in: ‘Go on, Coach Kavanagh!’

It made me laugh the first time it happened. The positive vibes are always appreciated, but being recognized on the street can be strange. In your head, you always expect that you’re a stranger to people who are strangers to you. It took a while to get my head around the fact that that was not necessarily the case – another example of how life was beginning to change for us all.

While Conor enjoyed an enormous amount of support, there were also a lot of people who, even after he beat Mendes for the interim title, still remained unconvinced by his credentials. For a long time he had been subjected to claims that he was being protected by the UFC: they were supposedly deliberately keeping him away from top wrestlers. As I saw it, stopping a guy like Chad Mendes in the second round was as emphatic an answer as anyone could give to the question of whether Conor could overcome a high-class grappler, but apparently it still wasn’t enough. Excuses were made on Mendes’s behalf: he took the fight on short notice; he won the first round; the fight was stopped too early.

I struggled to agree with any of that. It was a short-notice fight for Conor too, given that he had been preparing for a completely different type of opponent. And from what I could see, Mendes was in very good shape. He would have known that, given José Aldo’s history of withdrawing from fights, there was a strong chance he’d be getting a call-up. When that call came, I’d suspect that it didn’t come as much of a surprise to Mendes. He would have been ready for it. At this level, guys are always in shape for at least three rounds anyway.

He may have had the better of the first round, but that counts for little if you can’t even make it as far as the end of the second. When Chael Sonnen outwrestled Anderson Silva for four rounds in 2010, I don’t recall anybody claiming that it diluted the significance of Anderson’s victory, which came via submission in the fifth and final round. In fact, Silva was praised for having the ability to dig out a seemingly unlikely win.

As for the criticism of referee Herb Dean stopping the fight with just three seconds of the second round remaining, it’s worth noting that there wasn’t a single complaint about that from Chad Mendes. I’m sure he was grateful to Herb for intervening and preventing him from taking any further punches while he was clearly concussed.

After the fight, there were claims that Conor’s lack of grappling ability had been exposed. Sure, he had given up a few takedowns, but he actually withstood more takedown attempts than he conceded. And even when he was taken down, he was doing damage from the bottom.

Still, the questions and criticism kept on coming. A lot of people were extremely reluctant to admit that he was winning simply because he was a great fighter. I soon realized that this was no bad thing. As long as there are questions to be answered, there’ll be big fights to be made. Can he beat a wrestler on a full training camp? Can he beat a champion? Can he beat a champion in a heavier weight class?

Questions are good for business. If questions aren’t being asked, people will be less interested to see him fight. Critics may never run out of questions, but we’ll do our utmost to answer as many of them as we can.

In an ideal world, Conor would have taken some time off after his win against Mendes. After returning from the injury he sustained against Max Holloway, he fought three times in six months to seal his title shot and then went straight into a hectic promotional tour for UFC 189, before embarking on a challenging training camp while dealing with a knee problem and the change of opponent. It had been draining for us all, but especially for Conor. I felt he could have done with a holiday. However, lying on a beach for a week is not his style.

Shortly before the Mendes fight, Conor had agreed to be a coach on a series of The Ultimate Fighter. It required an additional six weeks in Las Vegas, during which he would guide a team of up-and-coming European fighters against their counterparts from the USA, who were under the stewardship of Urijah Faber. Filming was scheduled to begin just a few days after UFC 189, so Conor was heading straight from one big commitment to the next without taking a break. I was concerned that he might be pushing himself too far, but I also understood him well enough by now to know that his mind always needs to be occupied: he gets bored on the rare occasions that he takes even a couple of days off. Perhaps this was going to be the perfect solution. It was six weeks of work, but he was observing fights and training sessions instead of taking part.

The day before filming began, he tried to back out of it. At that stage he just wanted to come home. The only thing that convinced him to go ahead was that Artem Lobov was involved. Artem had been striving to earn a UFC contract for a long time and, unlike many other fighters, he refused to take the easy route to the top. He regularly took fights at short notice against top opponents, competing from featherweight to welterweight. He took risks and they didn’t always pay off. That left him with as many losses on his record as wins, but there was no doubt in my mind that he was good enough to compete in the UFC. He just needed an opportunity to prove it. That finally came when he was selected for The Ultimate Fighter after impressing at the tryouts.

In order to secure a place in the show for the duration of the series, fighters are first required to come through a preliminary fight against a fellow contestant. Artem’s fight was scheduled to take place on the Wednesday after Conor had beaten Mendes. As always, Artem had played an important role in Conor’s training camp, so the plan for him once UFC 189 had finished was to have a massage, get some rest and prepare for what was likely to be the most important fight of his life. But that’s not quite how things played out.

We all got a bit carried away with the jubilation of Conor’s achievement, and the celebrations went on for a couple of days. Artem was at the heart of it all. He was due to report for TUF filming on the Monday morning, but he woke up late that afternoon nursing a dreadful hangover as a result of a two-day bender. Forty-eight hours from his fight, he could barely get out of bed.

Artem managed to report to the TUF crew on the Monday evening and spent Tuesday cutting weight. He had been drawn to face Mehdi Baghdad, who was one of the favourites going into the season. Artem was still suffering the effects of the hangover by the time he entered the octagon so he subsequently didn’t show what he was capable of. Mehdi Baghdad won via majority decision and Artem’s dream of earning a UFC contract was seemingly over. He was devastated: it looked like he had blown his chance.

That’s when Conor’s influence came into play. In spite of the loss, he was able to arrange for Artem to receive a wildcard spot in the competition. It was a second bite at the cherry for Artem and no one was more deserving of that break. He certainly grabbed that opportunity with both hands, picking up three consecutive wins, all by knockout, making him the first fighter to do so in the history of The Ultimate Fighter. Artem eventually lost a decision in a frustrating final fight against Ryan Hall, but it was a case of ‘mission accomplished’ as he had done enough to convince the UFC to offer him a contract.

I was over the moon for Artem. He’d grown up in Russia, but his family had moved to Ireland when he was a teenager. Artem had never practised any martial arts until he took up self-defence classes at Dublin City University at the age of twenty-one, while studying for a degree in Business Studies and Spanish. That led him to Straight Blast Gym. For a number of months after Artem joined the gym, I actually thought he was Brazilian. I have no idea why. I tried to use my few words of Portuguese with him whenever we spoke, but he just smiled back at me awkwardly. Eventually he corrected me discreetly: ‘Sorry, coach. We speak Russian in Russia, not Portuguese.’

Watching that season of The Ultimate Fighter, it was particularly intriguing to observe Conor’s approach to coaching other professional fighters. After a couple of days of filming, he sent me a message: ‘I’m glad I went ahead with this. I’m chilling in the gym and watching fights. This is exactly what I want to do every day. It’s perfect.’

Conor demonstrated the concept of light, flow sparring at an easy pace to the guys on his team and most of them were fascinated by it. Like the majority of fighters, they were only familiar with full-throttle sessions that mimicked a fight. It didn’t surprise me that flow sparring was a completely new idea for so many of them. It’s something I had been preaching for a long time but it was often met with scepticism from outside SBG.

As for Conor’s overall performance as a coach, I was very impressed. I don’t think his future lies in coaching, but that has nothing to do with his ability to teach. It’s because he’s bloody incapable of showing up for anything on time! When Conor coached striking classes at SBG, he was absolutely excellent. Even nowadays in the gym, he’s always helping his teammates. It comes naturally to him. But if you’re scheduled to teach a 7 p.m. class, you can’t turn up at 9 p.m. and act surprised when you find out that all your students have left. Punctuality is actually a hugely important part of coaching. If people are preparing themselves physically and mentally to train at a certain time, you can’t keep them waiting. Maybe he’ll rectify his poor timekeeping when he gets older and settles down, but it’s hard to picture it now. I’ve worked with him for ten years and he’s never been on time for anything. But if somebody asks Conor a question when he’s on the mat, he could end up spending forty-five minutes explaining the answer. I’ve seen him do that many times in the gym, whether it’s with a beginner or a fellow professional. The ability to teach is definitely there. The ability to arrive early is not. Conor has spent a lot of money on nice watches in the last couple of years. Some day he might actually start using them.

The fight we’d been waiting for, against José Aldo, was set for UFC 194 at the MGM Grand on 12 December. It would be a featherweight title unification bout – the reigning champion versus the interim champion.

There was universal agreement among Conor, his training partners, the other coaches and myself that while we had achieved the desired result against Chad Mendes, the training camp had been far too long and draining. For the next one, things needed to be different. We decided to scale things back by staying in Dublin until three weeks before the fight.

A lot had been invested in promoting and preparing for the fight when it was initially booked for July, so part of me wondered if we were about to go through all of that for a second time only for it to be postponed again. We were well accustomed to opponents pulling out, but this was different – this was Aldo, the long-time champion. We really, really wanted this fight.

When people referred to Conor as the ‘interim’ champion, he didn’t like it. His view was that Aldo had gone running when the time came to fight, which made him the new champion. But Conor knew, as did everyone, that he couldn’t legitimately claim to be the best featherweight in the world without beating José Aldo. Even if Aldo had been stripped of the belt and Conor had been crowned the undisputed champion after beating Mendes, he still couldn’t claim to be the best featherweight in the world. That required a win over Aldo and nothing less. Aldo had become the best 145lb fighter in the world by seeing off the very best challengers on the planet for the past six years. In most cases he did so while in second gear. As nice as it had been to have a UFC belt in the gym, it was no more than a token.

After he concluded his duties as a coach on The Ultimate Fighter, Conor returned to Ireland in September 2015. He kept himself ticking over with some light training while he was away and I was curious to see how the knee had been holding up. Thankfully, it appeared to be as good as new. It was no longer restricting him at all. It hasn’t been an issue since and I can only hope it stays that way.

People often ask me for a glimpse of the schedule for Conor’s training camps, but the truth is that there isn’t one. Some coaches like to organize camps into blocks – strength training in the first four weeks, turning strength into explosiveness for the second four weeks and so on – but I don’t find that practical for MMA. With short-notice fights, opponents changing and stuff like that, the goalposts are always moving.

At SBG, our training doesn’t really change, regardless of whether the athlete is preparing for a fight or not. We don’t tend to do training camps in the same way that other teams do. In many gyms, fighters might take a few weeks off after a bout, during which they’ll abandon their diet and do absolutely no training. Then they’ll head back into a training camp for their next fight, starting from scratch, going from one extreme to the other. We prefer to keep ticking over at a similar, steady pace throughout the year. In Conor’s case, he used to train twice a day but now he mostly does one long session – lasting three or four hours – each day. It’s not intense from start to finish. Instead he maintains a steady pace all the way through. One day could be about sparring, the next might focus on pad work, another could be all about grappling. It’s adaptable. There are no restrictions. He could wake up one morning and feel like he’s not jumping out of his skin to train, so he might just come down and do a short session working on technique. The next day he might be on fire and you’re lining up ten sparring partners for him. When that energy is there, it’s important to capitalize on it. On the odd occasion that it’s not, it’s important to make allowances. Over the course of six, eight or ten weeks, you’re going to have a few days when you’re not feeling at your best. The content of the training changes every day. You go according to how you feel.

One side-effect of Conor being based in Dublin for the majority of this training camp was that we had to contend with people turning up at the gym looking for pictures and autographs. Conor has always been happy to accommodate his fans – he really appreciates the support – but we have a very strict policy about designating the gym as a place of work. Anybody who does come to the gym won’t get beyond the front desk unless they’re a member. People have shown up and said they’ve come all the way from America just to get a photo. They expect to march on through and ask for a selfie while Conor is in the middle of a session. People are sometimes shocked when we don’t allow them to walk in and get what they want. But the gym is where we train and it’s strictly off limits to the public. It’s the fighters’ place of business and it’s important that they’re not interrupted while conducting it.

It was full steam ahead for Conor’s crack at becoming an undisputed UFC champion, but in the meantime there was another big night for SBG on 24 October: UFC Fight Night 76 at the 3Arena. Even though Conor wasn’t involved, the tickets sold out in a matter of minutes. Once again there was a strong SBG presence on the bill, with Paddy Holohan, Aisling Daly and Cathal Pendred flying the flag. While Ais and Cathal were to feature on the prelims, Paddy had been given a main-card slot for his clash with American prospect Louis Smolka. It was a big fight and it became even bigger as the event drew nearer. With ten days to go, an injury to Stipe Miocic forced the cancellation of his heavyweight bout against Ben Rothwell. Paddy’s fight was subsequently bumped up to be the penultimate fight of the night. But it didn’t end there. On the Tuesday night before the event, we found out that Joseph Duffy was out of his fight against Dustin Poirier due to a concussion. That fight had been at the top of the bill, so with four days to go, Paddy was promoted to headline a UFC card in his home town, just as Conor had done fifteen months earlier.

In hindsight, it was too much, too soon. It had been a nice, low-key build-up to what was an important fight for Paddy, in which a win would have been rewarded with a place in the rankings in the 125lb division. Then, all of a sudden, a heavy weight of promotion rested on his shoulders. A lot of pressure accompanies the role of being an Irish fighter in a UFC main event on home soil, and Paddy felt it. He did his best but, as he confided in me afterwards, he just wasn’t ready to handle it. His ultimate aim was to be involved in those high-profile occasions but he wanted to work his way into that position gradually. The expectation became extremely draining. Even the walk-out left him feeling tired. As soon as he stepped inside the octagon, his legs felt heavy. That’s common for fighters – it’s a natural feeling, a hormonal fight-or-flight response as blood rushes to the legs – but if you’re cognizant of the magnitude of the situation, that can grow in your head and spread throughout your body, to the detriment of your performance. You can usually brush off that feeling of heaviness once the action begins, but if there’s even a tiny seed of doubt in your mind, that seed will flourish and manifest itself in your physical output. That’s exactly what happened to Paddy against Louis Smolka. He looked sluggish right from the start and he faded very quickly. That had never happened to him before. He has maintained a good pace in three-rounders before and against opponents that I’d rate as tougher than Smolka. But fair play to Smolka, who wasted no time in capitalizing. He scored a rear naked choke win in the second round. It was hugely disappointing, but Paddy learned so much from the experience, and I’m excited to see him putting those lessons into practice.

There were mixed fortunes for us earlier on the card, but the night really belonged to Aisling Daly. During the previous UFC show in Dublin, Ais had been stuck in filming for The Ultimate Fighter while her teammates were creating the biggest night in the history of Irish MMA. Missing out on that was really tough for her, so she was determined to make the most of this opportunity. She had been battling depression and was coming off a loss to Randa Markos the previous April, so Ais left no stone unturned in her preparation for this fight. Her opponent, Ericka Almeida, was a teammate of José Aldo’s at Nova União in Brazil, so it was also a chance for Ais to draw first blood for SBG in that particular battle.

Everything that night went Aisling’s way, from the walk-out to the fight itself. Before we went out, I told Ais to soak the whole occasion in. That’s important for fighters. Sometimes we forget that. I want all my fighters to be able to look back on these moments some day with their grandkids and have great stories to tell. We can often be guilty of rushing through fights and ignoring the atmosphere, but you’ve got to create memories to cling to, which will remind you of why you put in all this effort when you reflect on your career in twenty, thirty, forty years’ time.

However, I also said to Ais that when we got to the octagon, everything else was to be blocked out. That’s exactly what happened. She looked me in the eye and I could see that she had flicked the switch. She was in the zone now. Ericka was good, but Ais was on fire. The unanimous-decision win was her reward for months of hard work.

It wasn’t such a good night for Cathal Pendred. He’d had so many fights in such a short space of time – this was to be his sixth in just fifteen months – and I tried to steer him in the direction of taking a break. But he just wanted to keep going. His opponent, Tom Breese, had far less experience, but he’s someone who I believe could go on to great things in the future. The difference in skill between them was enormous, as evidenced by Breese’s first-round TKO win. Breese made it very one-sided. You could do nothing but tip your hat to him. He’s definitely one to watch.

Cathal hadn’t been his usual self in the build-up to that fight. The desire and determination that had taken him so far seemed to be lacking.

When Cathal told me a few weeks later that he had decided to retire from MMA, it didn’t come as any great surprise. He had been going non-stop for a long time and I knew the hunger was starting to fade, as it eventually does for everyone. Other interests away from the gym were starting to enter his life, which is a healthy thing. I always encourage my fighters to make sure that they’re working on an exit strategy for when that time comes. Cathal had a few things on the go, including potential movie roles, media work and opening a restaurant. As a result, he was starting to miss training sessions, which was extremely out of character for him. When you start seeing stuff like that, you know the fighter has one foot out the door already.

I’m pretty blunt with my fighters. Everything is black and white. They know they’ll get all my attention if they’re on the mat, but that won’t be the case if they’re skipping sessions. I have to put my energy into people who are in the gym. I’ve got forty fighters now, so I don’t have time to chase them all if they’re not showing up. The guys know that’s part of the deal. Regardless of how big your upcoming fight may be, if you’re not on the mat, you’re not even in my head. If we’re not having a lot of interaction on the mat, there’s not much I can do for you as a coach. I know some coaches do it differently. Kieran McGeeney is great when it comes to monitoring his players all the time. If one of them is out on a Friday night, Kieran will hear about it and he’ll be at the guy’s door on Saturday morning. I can’t imagine anything more terrifying than seeing Kieran at the door. But I’ve never really been that type. If you’re at the gym, we’re there together.

Cathal has always been very honest with himself, and he recognized that there was a substantial skill difference between himself and Tom Breese. After a loss like that, you have to take a step back and assess your situation. Do you want to be that guy who’s just a journeyman and a stepping stone for other fighters? If your heart isn’t in it the way it had been before, you could end up getting hurt. When he told me he had decided to walk away, I thought it was a very brave and wise decision. I was proud of him for making it himself, because most guys need to be told when they’ve gone too far. Cathal had done some amazing things in mixed martial arts. Winning four times in the UFC after being a Cage Warriors champion is something only one other Irishman has achieved. He left MMA with his head held high and rightly so, particularly given how late he came to the sport. He was an inspiration to many people, including myself. If you want something badly enough, never let anyone tell you that you’re not capable of attaining it. You’ll eventually reap the benefits of possessing that kind of attitude. Cathal Pendred is the proof.

Three weeks prior to the Aldo fight, we flew out to Los Angeles for the final stages of Conor’s training camp. We were preparing for a UFC title fight, just as we had been at UFC 189, but things were so much more relaxed this time. On that occasion there had been a lot of focus on the knee and how it would hold up. Here, it was just about the fight. This is where SBG is now, I thought. This is our level and it’s time to make a mark. It’s the best guy in Ireland against the best guy in the world. Let’s see if we belong here. Training had gone perfectly, so there was no need to be tense or apprehensive. All the bases had been covered. We were as ready as we had ever been.

The plan was to spend a couple of weeks in LA before driving up to Las Vegas for fight week. Conor had been admiring the expertise of a movement practitioner named Ido Portal for a while, and he invited Ido to join us for those final stages of training. By then, all the hard work was already done. Conor had been preparing for this fight for almost the entire year, so it was important to keep not only the body but also the mind fresh and loose. Ido’s callisthenic exercises were perfect for that.

At the pre-fight press conference a couple of days before UFC 194, the media read a lot into how laid-back Conor was. They were even examining his attire. Instead of the usual expensive suit, Conor showed up in a pair of jeans and a polo shirt. Having barked and snarled at Aldo during their previous media encounters, Conor actually gave him a respectful nod at the end of this staredown. Reporters wondered if this was some sort of reverse psychology to engage Aldo further in the mind games, but I think they were probably overanalysing it. As I recall, Conor’s new suits just hadn’t arrived on time. In addition, I think everyone had grown tired of promoting the fight at that stage. Having invested so much in it, Conor had come to the end of that particular task. In his mind, Aldo had shown up and the fight was definitely, finally, going to happen, so the time for talking was over.

This was to be Conor’s first time competing since the UFC introduced a ban on intravenous rehydration after the weigh-ins, so the weight-cut had the potential to be trickier than usual because he usually used IV. But thanks to the assistance of George Lockhart – a nutrition consultant and former fighter – this cut was as easy as it could possibly have been. The preparations had been absolutely perfect. There was nothing I would have changed. If the fight didn’t go our way, there would simply be no excuses.

I expected the fight to unfold one of two ways. Either Aldo would be cautious and fight very defensively during a tentative first round, or else he would bullrush Conor early and try to get his hands on him as quickly as possible. I hoped it would be the latter, because I was sure that would play into Conor’s hands. He’s a brilliant counter-puncher on the back foot and would punish Aldo if he overextended.

Once again the Irish fans had travelled to Las Vegas in huge numbers. However, this fight wasn’t quite so much about the occasion. We were used to that by now and knew that nothing at the MGM Grand could top what we had experienced at UFC 189. This was purely about going in, defeating José Aldo and taking that belt. Everything else was immaterial.

As we made the walk to the octagon and Conor stepped inside, there was a massive feeling of relief. Finally, this was it. It was almost as if we were at peace, as a team. The fight was going to happen. José Aldo against Conor McGregor: it was here for real now, and it wasn’t going away until the debate over the best featherweight in the world was settled. Since Conor’s time with Cage Warriors, I had been picturing their paths crossing. People laughed when Conor mentioned Aldo’s name in an MTV documentary that was made just after he was signed by the UFC. No debuting featherweight had done that before. You had to earn the right to talk about Aldo, let alone fight him. But Conor was very serious. He wouldn’t have seen any point in fighting in the UFC unless Aldo was his target.

Afterwards, many observers discussed Aldo’s pre-fight demeanour and body language, claiming that he seemed tense and anxious during the walk-out and introductions. It’s easy to be an expert in hindsight, but I’d be lying if I said I noticed anything different about him. He had his head down until the fight began, but that was normal for him. It had never failed him before.

Having given a deliberately restrained prediction of ‘Conor to win inside three rounds’ when the bout with Aldo was originally announced earlier in the year, I was more honest when writing my column for The42.ie just before the fight at UFC 194: ‘Part of me can see it being over in sixty seconds.’ I genuinely believed that could be the case, but that didn’t make it any less shocking when it actually happened. After such a drawn-out build-up, the contest that transpired was the shortest title bout in UFC history.

Conor charged out of his corner and took the centre of the octagon. He opened up with a straight left which narrowly missed the target, followed by an oblique kick to Aldo’s front leg. And then came the bullrush. Aldo pressed forward and faked a right to disguise a left hook, which actually landed. But Conor beat Aldo to the punch. He stepped back, countered with a beautiful left and the previously infallible UFC featherweight champion was chopped down like a pine tree. A year of preparation for just thirteen seconds … but we weren’t complaining.

I watched on in amazement, my mouth wide open, as I tried to process the fact that a historic moment in MMA, in Irish sport, had just happened a few feet in front of me. There was pandemonium in the arena all around me and I was soon partaking in it, but it took a while to come to terms with the significance of what had occurred. It’s never nice to see a fighter hurt like Aldo had been, particularly a legendary champion like him. But Conor’s achievement was simply phenomenal. Has a bigger statement ever been made in the UFC? I doubt it. Conor wouldn’t have to contend with that word he didn’t like any longer. Now he was undisputed.

After the new champion had been officially crowned and we made our way backstage, I found a quiet room and lay down on the floor. Orlagh can be sneaky with her phone and captured the moment I lay on the floor. At a time like that, it’s difficult to stop yourself from reflecting on the journey. I thought about being beaten up in Rathmines; about painting that tiny shed in Phibsboro on a scorching hot day; about Dave Roche and all the training partners from the days when we barely even knew what we were doing; about never having a penny to my name because I spent everything I earned on furthering my martial arts education; about the tough nights of working on the doors; about how I was in tears when the gym in Tallaght fell through; about being kicked out of the place in Rathcoole; about all the losses and the setbacks. For the vast majority of the journey, the most convenient move would have been to throw in the towel. But there’s no easy route to any place that’s worth getting to.

We enjoyed the celebrations, of course, but overall it had been a bittersweet night for SBG. Earlier on the UFC 194 card, Gunnar Nelson had suffered a comprehensive loss against Demian Maia. It wasn’t long after Conor’s win that my thoughts turned to Gunni. It’s always been the case that I’ll linger on a defeat even on our most successful nights. If there are nine wins and one loss, it’s the loss that will consume my mind afterwards. I wasn’t sure how Gunni would react to it – I was almost expecting him to tell me that he was done with the sport – but when we sat down together with the benefit of a couple of days to reflect on the fight, his words were music to my ears.

‘I’ve never been more certain that I’m going to win that welterweight belt. I’m 100 per cent convinced about that. I love this. I don’t want to do anything else. I’m going to be the champion.’

I was so happy to hear Gunni say that. He acknowledged immediately that the loss was a valuable lesson and he was already enthusiastic about putting what he had learned into action. It marked a real change in his mentality, because his response to losing to Rick Story hadn’t been nearly so positive. Gunni could have reacted to the defeat to Maia by telling himself that his opponent was just so much better than him that there was no point in continuing to be a fighter, but instead he chose to focus on the fact that he had survived three rounds without being submitted by probably the best Brazilian jiu-jitsu practitioner in mixed martial arts. There were times when he could have looked for a way out, and most guys probably would have, but Gunni persevered. Sure, he had made physical errors in the fight, but none of them were unsolvable. And given that he’s ten years younger than Demian Maia, Gunni has plenty of time to rectify his mistakes.

I hadn’t had much of a Christmas in 2014, because Conor had been preparing for his fight against Dennis Siver. I made up for that in 2015 by spending ten days over the festive period with my family in Spain. Usually when I’m getting on an aeroplane it’s for something MMA related, so this was a very welcome novelty. There was no talk of fights for the duration of the holiday and it was just what I needed.

I knew that as soon as I stepped off the plane back in Dublin, Conor would embark on a quest to do something that had never been done before.