What went wrong with Conor McGregor?

In the beginning, Conor McGregor was a man who knew exactly what he was about. He was a martial artist and prize fighter, converting a devastating left-hand into his ticket to the top.

And it was to the top that he was headed. The fights got bigger and bigger as the hype around him exploded like an MMA mushroom cloud. Before we knew it the prospect from Cage Warriors was one of the most recognisable athletes on the planet.  

But then, somewhere along the way, something went wrong. There were fights outside the cage, assaults on officials, and a certain incident in New York that went straight to the combat sports hall of infamy. So what happened? Where, in Conor McGregor’s world, did the train start to come off the tracks?

Well, in the early days it had been so straightforward. Back then his life was characterised by a Spartan simplicity. He might have been driving a beaten-up old Peugeot but his sense of identity was bulletproof. The Notorious that first burst into the UFC was one without a single solitary doubt over his purpose in this world: training, fighting, winning.

But what is Conor McGregor today? Is he still a fighter, first and foremost, or is fighting now secondary to his whiskey business and his status as a very rich individual?

Perhaps it was around the time of the Mayweather fight that McGregor’s sense of self first came into question. He’d performed better in that bout that many had predicted he ever could and, more importantly, the spectacle had finally netted him the fortune that the apprentice plumber had always dreamed of.

But he’d still lost to another man. Rescued by the referee in the ninth round.

Beneath the displays of bravado at the post-fight press conference there was a sense that McGregor wasn’t quite sure of what to make of it all. Was the night’s action to be considered a success, given the absurd financial payoff? Or, regardless of money, was a loss still a loss?

Did winning and losing even matter anymore? Was McGregor still a martial artist, or a man about to embark on a lifetime of spending?

That next morning his once-unshakeable self of sense may have started to blur somewhat in the haze of his champagne hangover.

The shift in his personality was evident in the relative passivity with which he accepted his loss to Khabib. After stumbling against Nate Diaz he had huddled himself away with his coaches and plotted his revenge. After being submitted by Nurmagomedov, meanwhile, he set off on a kind of promotional tour, touching down in sports stadiums and promoting his new whiskey on any platform that would offer him airtime.

But again, even as he smiled for the photo-ops there were hints of doubt in his demeanour, and signs that a loss still hurt just as much as it always had. It was as if the Irishman’s psyche was being pulled in two directions at once – one half now the liquor salesman and self-promoter, and the other half still the fighter, disgusted at himself for having taken the loss so easily.

Is it this schizophrenia that is at the root of his recent problems? Is it the loss of self that has manifested itself in the drinking, the fist fights in bars and ill-intentioned flights across the Atlantic?

Yes, the Conor McGregor of today has single mindedly acquired a fortune and an infinitely more secure life himself and family. Yet – and you can call me naïve – I have never seen him happier when all of that was still to come, and he was nothing more than a gunslinger out to take scalps.

More than anything this speaks to the truism that, sometimes, life is more about the journey than it is the destination. Even as McGregor enjoys the fruits of his hard work, he may still look back and yearn for the simplicity of the life he once lived on the way to the top, back when he was still the penniless scrapper who knew exactly who he was and where he was going.