Never Break Kayfabe

I GREW UP A HULKAMANIAC. I would get my dad to buy me his cereal from the dollar store, and I did my best to follow the four demandments—I trained, said my prayers, ate my vitamins, and believed in myself. Hulk Hogan stood for good, his opponents for bad, and Hogan always prevailed in the end. It was a simple time. A prepubescent time.

In 1993, Ric Flair came into my world and messed things up. He talked about sex and money. I was a six-year-old from Texas who went to Baptist Sunday school, and it made me uncomfortable. Ric Flair nicknamed his cock “Space Mountain,” said it was the ride with the longest line. He wore a Rolex and drove a Rolls Royce and wore outrageous sequined robes. I was taught that vanity was a sin. Ric Flair couldn’t stand the sight of fat people. My big brother was fat. We hated Ric Flair.

In the summer of 1994, Hulk Hogan was set to challenge Ric Flair at Bash at the Beach for the World Championship Wrestling (WCW) Heavyweight Championship. It was the long-awaited showdown between the two most famous wrestlers of all time. My brother and I watched with the same intensity we watched the Cowboys in the Super Bowl. Flair resorted to dastardly tricks. He tried to injure Hogan’s leg. Flair’s ally, the Sensuous Sherri, tried to strangle Hogan with her pantyhose. While the ref wasn’t looking, Flair grabbed a pair of brass knuckles and punched Hogan. Through it all, the Hulkster kept fighting, drawing strength from the faith all us little Hulkamaniacs had in him. He hit Flair with his big yellow boot and then his signature leg drop, and it was over. My brother and I jumped up and down. Good had prevailed.

It wasn’t long after this that I realized that wrestling was fake and lost interest. Several years later, when puberty started bubbling up for me, wrestling began to change. 1997 ushered in “the Attitude era,” and the major promotions started creating edgier content for older audiences. Ric Flair fit perfectly in this new model.

I still hated him but for slightly different reasons. In middle school, it was all about who was bigger, and I was scrawny. Ric Flair was buff. It was about who could get a girlfriend, and girls wouldn’t give me the time of day. Ric Flair rode in stretch limos filled with models who fawned over him while he sipped on champagne. I knew Flair was just a character, but he was a famous entertainer. He really was rich. There probably really were a lot of women who wanted to be with him. I was jealous.

By the time I got to high school, it was no longer cool to be a wrestling fan. It definitely wasn’t something you admitted to if you wanted to lose your virginity. Again, I left it behind. I didn’t think of it at all until the summer of 2005. I’d just graduated high school, and I was living in Austin with my brother who was going to UT. I was sleeping on a mattress on the dining room floor of the small house he shared with two other people. One night I had a friend over, and we were stoned and drunk off Lone Star. He got on my brother’s desktop and pulled up a video. “You gotta watch this,” he said. “It’s the funniest shit.”

It was a Ric Flair interview. I laughed. I hadn’t thought about him in years. It was from a different time, a Ric Flair I’d never seen before. He’s in a dingy studio, and his hair is long. It’s the ’80s. He starts ranting, and he’s got a battery in his back like I’ve never seen him, talking shit—“Last year, I spent more money on spilled liquor, in bars from one side of this world to the other, than you made! Ya talking to the Rolex-wearin’, diamond ring-wearin’, kiss-stealin’—woo!—wheelin’-dealin’, limousine-ridin’, jet-flyin’ son of a gun, and I’m having a hard time holding these alligators down! Woo!” We laughed so hard we could barely breathe. We played it again. Flair snaps at the producer, “Don’t wrap me up!” The hair, the sunglasses, the wooing. I remembered Space Mountain and realized he was a fucking genius in a way I never appreciated as a kid.

The next day, I rewatched the promo while sober, and it held up. I wanted to know its context. Among several others, he screams at Dusty Rhodes, “The American Dream.” I remembered him from the ’90s as being washed-up and overweight. I read the comments of the video, and someone wrote that it was part of the buildup to Starrcade ’85. I read up on the event.

In the fall of that year, Ric Flair and the rest of the vile Four Horsemen put Dusty through hell. Flair broke his ankle with a diving knee-drop then cranked on it with a figure-four leglock. People wondered if Dusty would ever wrestle again.

This wasn’t enough for Flair though. Apparently, there was a video of the Horsemen stalking Dusty outside the ring and jumping him in a parking lot. When it initially aired, people thought it was real and called the cops. I had to dig for about twenty minutes, but I eventually found it linked on a wrestling blog. The Horsemen follow Dusty in his red convertible and film it on a camcorder. They attack an unsuspecting Dusty as he gets out of the car. They tie him to a pickup truck and break his arm with a baseball bat. The Dream hollers in pain.

I read about Dusty’s legendary “Hard Times” promo. People called it the greatest babyface promo of all time. I looked up the insider wrestling jargon. “Babyface” means good guy, and “heel” means bad guy. “Kayfabe” is the illusion that the wrestling world is real. In his impassioned speech, Dusty thanks everyone who sent him cards while he recovered from his injuries. “The love that was given to me, I will repay you now.” He went after Flair—“He put hard times on Dusty Rhodes and his family! You don’t know what hard times are, daddy! Hard times are when the textile workers around this country are out of work. They got four, five kids and can’t pay their wages (bills).” He promised to win the belt for all the blue-collar American people. It was outlandish, but it was just a story, a work of fiction. It was the soap opera of professional wrestling. I ordered the Starrcade ’85 DVD and impatiently awaited its arrival.

* * *

Chael Sonnen was eight years old when Starrcade ’85 first aired. He grew up watching guys like Flair and Dusty and dreamed of one day performing in the squared circle. In 1998, during his sophomore year in college, he went to tryout for WCW. They were impressed but said he was too small. They invited him to come back after he graduated, but by then, the company had folded. He shifted his focus to a sport that was still in its infancy—mixed martial arts (MMA). It was like wrestling, only they really fought.

MMA (or cage fighting) is a sport with Brazilian roots that started in its modern form with UFC 1 in 1993. The idea of the event was to take practitioners of various fighting disciplines (boxing, karate, Brazilian jiu-jitsu, etc.) and pit them against each other to see which form was most effective in real combat. There were almost no rules; headbutts, hairpulling, and groin strikes were all in play. A cult following began to form. I was first introduced to the sport while making money as a guinea pig at a pharmaceutical testing center. It was the summer after my freshman year in college, and it was easier than finding a job. Between blood draws and meals, we just sat around with nothing to do. A guy brought a huge stack of MMA DVDs and played them in the theater room. I grimaced as a man kicked another man’s head like a soccer ball. I was intrigued, though, and other people filed into the theater like kids crowding around a fight at recess.

By the time Sonnen was coming up in the early 2000s, rules had been added to make the sport more palatable to the general public, and it gradually grew in popularity. As an All-American wrestler, Sonnen had the grappling skills to take down opponents and prevent them from being able to hit him. It was not the most exciting style, and while he won most of his fights, he remained unknown to casual fans.

Frustrated with earning fight purses in the low five figures, he transformed himself into “The American Gangster,” a heel. Channeling the wrestling promos he watched as a kid, he turned routine press conferences into must-see events. He famously declared that his rematch with Anderson Silva would be a loser-leaves-town gimmick match, promising to retire from the UFC if he lost. He became one of the biggest names in the sport.

According to Sonnen, good fight promotion simply comes down to storytelling. There needs to be a reason, real or contrived, that the two athletes are fighting. “I’ve seen enough punches and kicks,” he once said. “I’ve got to know why.”

The reason why wrestling promotional tactics translate so well to MMA is that, like wrestling, MMA is a soap opera, a modern melodrama. The drama of MMA comes naturally from its extreme nature. I would argue that other sports are watered-down forms of fighting. Athletes try to best each other physically within the parameters of their given sport. When they become too competitive, they break out of these confines. A basketball player who’s been knocked to the floor gets up and punches an opposing player. After a race, a NASCAR driver hits the driver who caused him to crash.

* * *

The melodrama genre originated in eighteenth-century European theater. It is characterized by over-the-top characters and extreme situations meant to draw strong emotional reactions from the audience. In The Melodramatic Imagination, author Peter Brooks writes that melodrama “refuses to content itself with the repressions, the tonings-down, the half-articulations, the accommodations, and the disappointments of the real.” It doesn’t concern itself with believability or good taste in its pursuit of thrills.

Stepping into a cage to fight someone in front of an audience is a far from normal experience, something very few will ever go through. The sport requires participants who are exceptionally confident and thrill-seeking. They are exaggerated people, the ultimate alphas. MMA does away with, to use Brooks’ words, the repressions and tonings-downs of other sports. To become a cage fighter is to reject a normal life. In no other major American sport are the stakes higher than in mixed martial arts. Of course, the fighters’ health is at great risk. Fans never have to worry about a fighter phoning it in. One loss can dramatically reduce a fighter’s earning power and future opportunities, and just a few consecutive losses can see them released from their contract.

* * *

In 2013, I was working the overnight shift at a shelter for the unhoused in Austin, Texas. I chose the third shift because there was a lot of downtime after the clients went to sleep when I could write. I was freelancing for Vice’s now-defunct MMA site, Fightland, and trying to write fiction as well. I decided a write a piece on an up-and-coming Irish fighter who inspired me. He had me believing in the power of visualization. I wrote about how he believed what we’re searching for in life can be found within. He said I could have anything I wanted in life if I truly believed in it. If I visualized it, it would manifest in reality. The fighter’s name was Conor McGregor. Walking out to the cage for his fights, he was oddly calm and loose. He said this was because he’d been there a thousand times before in his mind.

Being an aspiring writer from San Antonio, I wanted nothing more than to win the Texas Observer Annual Short Story Contest. I visualized myself winning over and over. I imagined getting a phone call or email from the judge, congratulating me. They would be so impressed that they would hook me up with their agent, and I would get a book deal on the spot. I just had to see it and really believe in it.

By the summer of 2014, McGregor had easily run through his first three UFC opponents as promised and was about to face what was meant to be his first true test. He was matched up with Dustin Poirier, a top contender with an impressive 8-2 record in the organization. McGregor prophesied that he would finish Poirier in the first round, detailing that he would “bounce” his head off the canvas. During the weigh-ins, they stared each other down and had to be separated. Each appeared ultra-confident, but only one could be right.

I was the only one in my friend group who liked MMA. When big events came around, I would try to talk them into chipping in for the pay-per-view. I sold them on McGregor, promised he was worth the price of admission. They came over to the house I shared with three other people, and we piled on the couch in the backroom. During the prelims, I was hyped for the fight but also nervous. I knew if it was boring, my friends would probably never chip in for another fight again.

That night, McGregor did not let me down, and his prediction ended up being eerily accurate. He landed a big left hook early in the first round that dropped Poirier. My friends hopped off the couch. The Irishman followed Poirier to the mat, finishing him with punches that, just as he specified, bounced his head off the canvas. He strutted around the octagon with the Irish flag draped around his shoulders. It was proof that visualization really worked.

The knockout is an extreme act that evokes emotion from the audience—awe, fear, anger. On the other side, Poirier lay helpless on the canvas. The gulf between winning and losing in MMA is enormous. After his hubris at the weigh-ins, Poirier looked a bit ridiculous. I felt bad for him. All that grueling training, and it was over in an instant. Though I’ve never been in a cage fight, and the mere thought of it terrifies me, I also felt empathy.

Author Ien Ang might say I related to Poirier. In her book Watching Dallas: Soap Opera and the Melodramatic Imagination, she concludes that soap operas appeal to viewers due to their “tragic structure of feeling”—that is, their reflection of life’s “endless fluctuation between happiness and unhappiness” and how “life is a question of falling down and getting up again.” She writes that while melodramas lack surface-level realism, they contain an emotional realism that viewers relate to. Though few can relate to the literal experience of cage fighting, the ups and downs of an MMA fighter’s career can reflect the joy and despair of life. All people experience failure, but never so suddenly, completely, and publicly as fighters. The sport provides a unique opportunity for empathy.

The heightened emotional state immediately following a fight is where a lot of work is done in terms of storytelling and character development. In these moments, fans are waiting to be told how to feel about a fighter. We have established norms about how wins and losses should be handled. Fighters should be humble in both victory and defeat, always giving credit to the opponent and thanking the coaches who helped them along the way. They shouldn’t be cocky in victory, and in defeat, should never make excuses or discredit their opponent. This is where fighters become babyfaces or heels. The least popular fighters flutter somewhere in between, leaving no lasting impression on the audience. In the world of pro wrestling, it is vital that performers draw some kind of reaction from the crowd, whether it be love or hate. Apathy is what they fear most.

In the cage after the win, McGregor spoke in perfect soundbites: “I don’t just knock them out. I pick the round.” “Call me Mystic Mac because I predict these things.” “I wanted to come over here and show the American public the new era of the fighting Irish, and I brought my whole country with me.” He was brash, but he also understood the intense Irish pride present in the US and played on it constantly. In possibly his most iconic line, he proclaimed, “We’re not here just to take part. We’re here to take over.” I’m not even Irish and it got me hyped. Me and my internet writer friends would take over the whole sad writer game. I would win the Pulitzer and call out every magazine that ever rejected me.

During the post-fight press conference, McGregor wore shades and an ivory three-piece suit. He sipped whisky and held court, with questions for other fighters being few and far between. He was well on his way to becoming the biggest star in the history of the sport. He was no longer a babyface per se; he’d transcended the binary to become a cool anti-hero.

By the mid-nineties, wrestling fans had grown bored with vanilla babyfaces and began rooting for the bad guys. The once black-and-white binary became messy. The New World Order, which saw the biggest babyface of all time, Hulk Hogan, turn dastardly, became the hottest thing in the industry. Then came Steve Austin. He debuted his “Stone Cold” gimmick in 1996, and despite being a villain, he quickly became a fan favorite. This was largely due to his charisma on the mic. Vince McMahon, the chairman and CEO of World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE), saw his potential and adjusted his character to be less of an outright villain and more of an anti-authority badass. He went on to become arguably the most popular wrestler in history, which suggests that anti-heroes have the highest ceiling.

When I tried to talk my friends into upcoming MMA fights, they’d ask, “Is that Irish dude fighting?” McGregor headlined his next two shows and drew huge viewership numbers. He knocked out both opponents and was granted a shot at longtime featherweight (145 lbs) champion José Aldo. During a long promotional media tour, he tormented Aldo with trash talk. He came off as a bully to some, but to others as a master of psychological warfare, a present-day Muhammad Ali. I couldn’t believe how he got away with some of the shit he said. When the tour stopped in Rio de Janeiro, where Aldo lives, he proclaimed, “I own this town. I own Rio de Janeiro…if this were a different time, I would invade his favela on horseback and kill anyone that was not fit to work, but we’re in a new time, so I’ll whoop his ass in July.”

He was a white man saying this to a man of color who grew up in dire poverty. He seemed crazy and out of control, but in reality, he was incredibly calculating, knowing just how far he could go. Coming from a white American this taunt would’ve certainly been out-of-bounds and condemnable, but McGregor isn’t American. He’s from a country that, like Brazil, is a victim of colonization, and does not have the history of African slavery shared by the US and mainland Europe. In his boldest prediction yet, McGregor said he would knock Aldo out in the fight’s very first exchange.

* * *

Melodrama appeals to us, in part, by the way it pushes against existential dread. It takes life, with its relationships, business deals, crimes, etc., very seriously and rarely digs for greater meaning. It operates on the idea that life is inherently meaningful and worthwhile. The audience is convinced by the exaggerated emotional intensity, which distracts them from bigger questions.

In order to work, melodrama must impose its values on the consumer. For example, in order to fully appreciate a romance novel, the reader has to believe in the non-universal concept of romantic love. The MMA community shares certain values too; fighters and fans engage in a collective imagination. They agree that championships are meaningful beyond description, that the chance to win one is worth any level of sacrifice. They also agree that to beat someone in a fight is to prove superiority over them as a person. This understanding is why it felt so momentous when Aldo, seconds after the opening bell, overextended himself throwing a right hook and got countered by a McGregor left. The Brazilian fell stiff against the canvas, out cold. It had lasted all of thirteen seconds, just as McGregor predicted. My friends and I flew off the couch. McGregor climbed onto the cage wall and mimed making it rain into the crowd. We’d paid 50 bucks for a fight that lasted thirteen seconds, but it was worth it. I’d told anyone who’d indulge me that McGregor was going to finish him in the first, and now I could gloat.

McGregor had achieved a childhood dream in stunning fashion. It was the big payoff to the Aldo-McGregor storyline, but still, in the post-fight press conference, journalists asked McGregor and UFC President Dana White, “What’s next?” MMA lacks the finality of other sports, where a champion is crowned at the end of a season and an off-season follows. There are always hungry contenders waiting in the wings. There’s always a new fight to sell.

MMA, like pro wrestling and the soap opera, is a serial with continuous narratives, as opposed to an episodic series with standalone chapters. The WWE has been running for over 40 years with no hard break in the narrative. In a soap opera, each episode has a main conflict along with several parallel storylines running in the background which will eventually get the spotlight in future episodes. UFC events consist of undercard fights and one main event. The stories of different weight divisions and the stories of individual fighters are advanced in each event, dictating the makeup of future shows.

* * *

Dustin Poirier’s MMA story has been long and winding. He grew up in working-class Lafayette, Louisiana, and started his pro career fighting in riverfront casinos and racetrack arenas. His career has been a cycle of grinding his way to the top and coming up just short. He won his first four UFC fights and was one win away from fighting for the featherweight title before losing a classic battle with the “Korean Zombie” Chan Sung Jung. In backstage interviews after the fight, he was openly heartbroken. He fought through tears while answering questions. “I trained hard,” he said. “I owed it to my wife. I owed it to myself. It’s a big hit to me, man. This is my life.” It’s often said that vulnerability is a key to building connections in relationships, and in fiction, we’re taught, when trying to write a likable protagonist, to show their humanity and weaknesses. In this way, Poirier is a classic babyface.

In wrestling, the babyface is almost always the smaller, or—in the case of Ric Flair vs. Dusty Rhodes—the less athletic one. Poirier is a gifted athlete for sure, but McGregor is ideally built for MMA with his long arms and block-head. Poirier is a hard puncher, but McGregor has power never before seen at featherweight. Following the loss to McGregor, Poirier moved up a division to lightweight (155 lbs) and quietly won four straight fights. Again on the cusp of a title fight, he suffered an upset KO loss. Yet again, he was forced to start over and build a new winning streak brick by brick. The wins came at a high cost, though. Facing the division’s best, he survived wars of attrition, outlasting his opponent after absorbing a ton of punishment. As he endured and suffered, my love for him grew. He inspired me in a different way than McGregor. His success was a testament to perseverance. I would continue to write no matter how much rejection I faced.

We as audience members are sadists and want our hero to suffer. The vast majority of wrestling storylines follow the same formula—heel screws over babyface and puts babyface through the wringer before eventually getting their comeuppance and eating their words. Promoters know the more the heel makes the hero hurt, the more justified the hero will be in exacting revenge. We are eager to cheer for violence, but we want it to feel justified. The heel’s terrible deeds absolve us of our guilt.

While Poirier grinded away, McGregor continued his unprecedented rise in popularity. He was the sport’s biggest star and top earner and wouldn’t let anyone forget it. Anyone he fought would earn a percentage of the pay-per-view profits and make far more than they ever had in their career. Naturally, fighters lined up to fight the Irishman. He tweeted, “Line them up on their knees with their hands out. I want them to beg me.” During a press conference, he famously quipped, “When you sign to fight me, it’s a celebration. You ring back home. You ring your wife, ‘Baby, we done it. We’re rich. Conor McGregor made us rich. Break out the red panties.’”

Constantly reminding opponents of what a privilege it is for them just to be in his presence—this is straight from the Flair playbook. McGregor encouraged the comparisons, wearing ridiculous Versace robes and alligator loafers.

Flair didn’t dress or speak like real rich people do. He was a cartoon version of a rich person, what people who don’t interact with rich people in real life might think they’re like. Wrestling is made for the working poor, and because of this, is considered lowbrow and not a “real” art form. This was true of melodrama theatre in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries as well. The plays injected excitement into the monotonous lives of factory workers. The stories often played on class tensions and anxieties. A common storyline involved a working-class or middle-class woman trying to evade the unwanted sexual advances of an aristocrat, clearly a metaphor for the exploitation of commoners by the wealthy. Ric Flair didn’t just present himself as a rich guy but as a part of the American aristocracy, someone born into money. In my favorite heel promo of all time, he rants, “The difference between me and just about everybody else is I was born with a golden spoon in my mouth. Nobody likes that!”

* * *

Though he did not deserve it by normal MMA logic, McGregor was granted a shot at the lightweight title. He brought in revenue like no one ever before, and therefore, the standard rules didn’t apply to him. It was an opportunity to become the first fighter to hold championships in two weight divisions simultaneously. He put on a show against champion Eddie Alvarez, taunting him with his hands behind his back, playing with his food, before putting him away with a beautiful three-punch combo. In the post-fight interview, with a belt on each shoulder, he did a classic heel fake-out—“Backstage, I’m starting fights (with) everybody. I’ve ridiculed everyone on the roster, and I just wanna say, from the bottom of my heart, I’d like to take the opportunity to apologize…to absolutely nobody! The double champ does what the fuck he wants! I’m the shit!” The crowd went wild. He had gone completely heel. I was speechless. It was a flawless performance, both in the cage and on the mic. I imagined an elderly Ric Flair, sitting on his couch in a glistening robe, grinning from ear to ear.

McGregor soon cashed in on his wild popularity and earned over $100 million boxing Floyd Mayweather, Jr. His Instagram filled up with views from yachts and private planes. Despite myself, I began to feel jealous. I understood that the posts were designed to make me feel that way, but awareness didn’t save me from being a mark (someone who falls for the storyline/characters). I appreciated the character work being done, but at the same time, I wanted to see him taken down a notch. I grew up fairly privileged, but as a social worker and writer, I had no real prospects of becoming wealthy or ever experiencing his lifestyle. We like to see others succeed but only to a certain extent. As Flair put it once, “It’s the old adage of you like to hear somebody’s doing pretty good, but you don’t wanna hear they’re doing better than you…and my whole career, I’ve always done better than everybody else.”

While McGregor dabbled in boxing, a Russian grappler from Dagestan named Khabib Nurmagomedov easily won a fight for the vacant title. More interesting was what happened before the fight. With cameras following him, McGregor stormed into the Barclays Center in Brooklyn and attacked a bus that contained Khabib and other fighters, throwing a dolly that broke a window and sent glass shards flying through the vehicle. Khabib was unharmed, but several others experienced minor injuries. McGregor was arrested and quickly released on bail.

Five months later, footage of the attack could be seen in the UFC’s official promo trailer for UFC 229: Khabib vs. McGregor. This was McGregor’s punishment, a title shot. Chael Sonnen was not surprised by the announcement. He condemned the attack but saw it as a calculated move. He pointed out that it was McGregor’s own media team that filmed it. He said he knew the real Conor to be a shy guy, but when the camera turns on, “He’s a consummate professional. He understands that there’s a show.”

Mystic Mac predicted he would knock out Khabib in devastating fashion. When it came to the promotional taunting proceeding the fight, nothing was off-limits to McGregor, and at times, his insults veered into the racist and anti-Muslim. He called Khabib a “Dagestani rat” and tweeted a picture of Khabib’s wife wearing a face veil with the caption, “You’re wife’s a towel, mate.” He was no longer the man who’d once inspired me. I knew he deserved to get his ass beat.

Early in the fight, Khabib grounded the striker and got on top of him. He rained down punches and famously told the Irishman, “Let’s talk now.” My friends and I cheered on Khabib. “Conor fucked with the wrong one!” we said. After the end of round three, microphones picked up McGregor muttering to Khabib, “It’s only business”—a break in kayfabe he now denies. In the following round, he tapped out to a nasty neck crank. It was a moment widely celebrated on social media.

For once, McGregor’s prediction didn’t come true. Visualization had failed him. It had failed me too. I’d entered the Texas Observer Short Story Contest every year since 2014 and only had a few honorable mentions to show for it. I admitted my visualization practice to a friend for the first time, told her I was having my doubts. She laughed.

“Oh, that’s just that shit from The Secret. That’s a scam,” she said. I had never heard of The Secret. I got ahold of the DVD and watched it. People talked about how they manifested checks in their mailbox through thought alone. I turned it off after fifteen minutes.

Soon any love I still had for McGregor would disappear. In 2019, he was twice accused of sexual assault. In August of the same year, he was caught on camera punching an elderly man in a pub after the man refused his offer of a drink. He’d become a scumbag. When players in other sports do awful things, I don’t want to see them play their sport anymore. MMA is different, though. Because it is fighting, it offers a real chance at retribution. Given McGregor’s wealth and status, he was never going to face real legal consequences, but there was still a chance he could get his ass kicked in the octagon.

With the investigations still ongoing, McGregor returned to MMA against a past-his-prime Donald “Cowboy” Cerrone. It was the MMA equivalent of a wrestling squash match, where the heel crushes a feeble opponent and builds hate from the crowd. This was the first McGregor fight in the UFC I didn’t watch. I already knew what was going to happen. McGregor beat Cerrone in less than a minute.

* * *

Back in 2005, when my Starrcade DVD finally came in the mail, I didn’t have the patience to sit through the early matches. I skipped to the main event. There was no level Ric Flair wouldn’t stoop to in order to keep his belt. In the match, he targeted Dusty Rhodes’ injured left leg, stomping and cranking on it. Dusty fought through the pain, showing all the heart in the world, and eventually got the upper hand. Suddenly, when victory was in sight, Flair’s goons rushed into the ring while the ref was distracted. Dusty fought one of them off, but the other kneed him from behind. Flair rolled on top of Dusty for the pin, but Dusty kicked out just before the count of three. Flair went to pick him up, but in a savvy counter, Dusty rolled Flair over, pressing his shoulders to the mat. One. Two. Three. The son of a plumber was champion. In the locker room, covered in champagne, Dusty again shouted out “all the textile workers, all the autoworkers, all the car workers, all the blue-collar people across this country, this great land.” It was catharsis for the viewers. Finally good had prevailed. Wrestling is one place where the poor can triumph over the rich.

Dustin Poirier would go on to suffer the same fate as McGregor in his chance against Khabib, who would soon retire with a flawless 29-0 record. This left a vacuum at the top of the lightweight division. McGregor-Poirier 2 made sense. I debated not even watching the fight. I had a bad feeling about it. I was afraid for Poirier. McGregor had dispatched him so easily six years earlier. If he lost again, after all his hard work and goodwill, it would be further evidence that life is unfair. It would feel too Sisyphean.

I didn’t tell my friends about the fight. I ended up watching it alone on my laptop, lying in bed. The fight began similarly to the first, with McGregor stalking Poirier and landing his vaunted left hand. A sense of dread came over me. I couldn’t look. I expected every punch to be the one that put Poirier down, but the bell rang to signify the end of the first round, and he was still standing.

McGregor found himself unexpectedly in a second round with someone who could now handle his power. Poirier kept eating shots, and I wondered how much more he could take. Midway through the round, he saw something in McGregor’s combinations, a pattern, an opening. He became more aggressive. I sat up in bed. Poirier landed a right hand that stunned the Irishman. No fucking way, I thought. That was all the opening Poirier needed. He swarmed the former champion, who bobbed and weaved against the cage until a massive right hand landed square on his chin. He dropped to his ass. He was gone, his hands limp at his sides, his head completely exposed. The ref moved to step in, but before he got there, Poirier cocked back a right and blasted McGregor on the chin, and McGregor slumped over on his side. It was over. Poirier raised his hands. He did it for all the hardworking American people. All the money and power in the world didn’t protect McGregor from taking permanent damage. Memes of him unconscious on the canvas quickly circulated on social media.

Poirier, forever the babyface, did not gloat. He reminded everyone that it was one to one, each holding a victory over the other. He chalked the win up to hard work and thanked his team, his coaches, his wife, and Louisiana for their support.

In retrospect, McGregor’s fall was inevitable. Given his newfound wealth, there was no way he would be able to maintain the same level of hunger and dedication as when he was living on the dole. Everyone at the top is so good that if you let up just a little, you get eaten up. McGregor could’ve retired on top, but the addiction to fame kept him coming back.

* * *

Modern melodramas are not taken seriously as pieces of art, even by most diehard followers. Kids aside, nearly all fans of pro wrestling can acknowledge its ridiculousness. It’s part of the appeal, but irony alone isn’t enough to sustain viewers long-term. Successful soap operas invite you to laugh at them but still demand, through their plotting, that you tune in tomorrow to see what happens next. It’s a tough balancing act, and melodramas are always in danger of devolving into pure silliness. This is a problem MMA doesn’t suffer from. No matter how outrageous of a persona a fighter presents to the public or how dumb their insults are on Twitter, in the end, they will have to get locked in a cage with another trained killer with everything on the line.

Six months after the rematch, Poirier and McGregor would share the cage for a third time to settle the score once and for all. McGregor took the trash talk to a new level in the buildup. Instead of being clever and mean, he was just mean. He said he would murder Poirier, send him home in a coffin. The fight ended up being anticlimactic, with McGregor injuring his leg badly and not being able to continue. While in agonizing pain, he berated Poirier from the ground, screaming “This isn’t over!” “Your wife is in my DMs!” The MMA media largely reacted to his comments with disgust, but Chael Sonnen was not among them. He saw it as a masterpiece. He praised McGregor for his ability to cut a promo and stay in character while in unthinkable pain, for the way he kept working the crowd and created the story of the next fight.