‘Gods recognize gods’…Conor McGregor now a contender in the Divineweight division

Conor McGregor solemnly swears he will always show up for fights. For press conferences this holds true, too, but he doesn’t always show up on time. Such was the case for Wednesday’s first UFC 197 media conference in Las Vegas, which started 25 minutes late and — temporarily — without the Irishman himself. When he did show he appeared with his head shaved, sunglasses, and an unbuttoned $1,250 Versace shirt that he said made him feel like "El Chapo in his prime." His first zinger, in defending his own tardiness, was that he didn’t wear watches to tell time.

The inference? He wears watches for the extravagance of adorning his wrists.

Honestly, what’s not to love?

In 2016, McGregor becomes the whole story in MMA. He’s vying for Rafael dos Anjos’ belt on March 5 at UFC 197, which is the first piece of history that he has by now accepted as inevitable. That’s not all. As he boasted in the press conference, 155 pounds is just another loose ball of yarn that he can unfurl by tugging a single thread. By the end of the year, if he has it his way, McGregor said he wants to take home the 170-pound belt as well. Robbie Lawler, who traveled as a mute tag along for certain stops of the UFC 189 World Tour that McGregor headlined last year, couldn’t have known that dude was gunning for his belt, too.

And, I mean…imagine for a minute McGregor and Lawler. That’s almost unfathomable. Or, say if Georges St-Pierre comes back and reclaims his title the way Dominick Cruz did last weekend in Boston. Imagine McGregor and GSP coming together, just because one man "loves collecting" things (belts, cars, promotions). St-Pierre and McGregor are admirers of each other now, but together they could stumble upon the great end to MMA’s rainbow. They could split the lucky charms two ways and fill swimming pools with Benjamin Franklin’s dubious grin.

But wait, wait, wait...hold up. For heaven’s sake. Slow down.

It’s easy to get caught up in McGregor’s grand schemes, especially since just about everything he’s ordained so far has come to pass. It’s hard for McGregor to bounce up to welterweight when he also says he’s making time for Frankie Edgar and Nate Diaz, both of whom were bypassed with a wave of McGregor’s hand. Some of these visions are going to require more than just an ounce of McGregor’s own mysticism. Some of them are going to require extra McGregors. The calendar only holds so many days.

At any rate, the "Notorious" McGregor was pissed off that he showed up to the presser only to discover that on the UFC 197 promotional poster RDA was the only one holding a belt. This led to an impromptu rant, in which McGregor condemned the UFC’s poster-makers as shortsighted plebian types, well beneath He and the Gods. (Oh, and the Gods? This is no heretic, as some would have you believe. He and "Jesus are cool" with each other, because "Gods recognize Gods." See, it’s not just the poster people who are falling under the shadow of an earthbound deity — we all are!). 

The thing is, two-and-a-half years into McGregor’s UFC run you’re never sure which McGregor you’re going to get. Materialistic McGregor has been around for a bit, so has The King, and the one with a penchant top shelf whiskey. The Zen one showed up in Las Vegas this past December with a movement coach, Ido Portal, who has now softly transmuted into a cult figure. Other times he’s a coxcomb, a dandy, a blue-collar worker who at one point was a plumber. He’s got more channels than your average cable package, and all of them broadcast one thing: A glorious ego.

In other words, perfect in every way for the fight game. And he was great in his first big appearance in 2016. Lumping himself with the gods? You think he jumps the shark (like at the "Go Big" presser in September), and then he turns around and jumps it again, this time with a blowtorch to teach the shark a lesson about getting in his way.

If there’s been a constant to McGregor since the word go it’s the bombastic businessman, who at this point is using the UFC landscape to grow McGregor Inc. It's a booming business within the business. He showed up again on Wednesday, calling his shots, pumping audacity, tempting the runway, and leaving a trail of casualties. How so? RDA is a disgrace to Brazil. Donald Cerrone is a p*ssy. Kings MMA in Southern California is a "bum gym." Conor McGregor is simpatico with the whole pantheon of gods.

With payoffs like that, so what if he was a little late?