The latest video in the UFC'S Embedded series documented the immediate aftermath of the Wednesday's press conference in which bottles were thrown and feelings were hurt. What it shows is that the tide has turned for Conor McGregor and for the first time in his career, he is losing the mental battle before a fight.
McGregor fans watching the Embedded video will be surprised to see the usually cool and confident demeanor of McGregor completely shattered. After being ushered off the stage he begins complaining in a whiney tone about how Diaz had to stay for the face off before letting his frustration get the better of him, shouting"F*CK", and storming off.
McGregor's inner Crumlin even managed to squeeze through the space left by his vacated cool demeanor saying, "I'm gonna bleedin' burst yerman! [...] Seriously it's on now," before punching the door in frustration on his way out.
Perhaps he wasn't fully aware at the time, but McGregor must know now that by walking out of the press conference early, Diaz orchestrated a power shift within the dynamic of the two fighters.
The next scene shows Diaz in Whole Foods casually laughing and joking with the rest of the 209 team.
This is a different Nate Diaz than the one we saw in the short run-up to UFC 196. That Diaz was ready to let McGregor do the talking while he punctuated awkwardly mumbled responses with shouted expletives. This time, Diaz is controlling the relationship and dropping lines like,
"He walked in like he was the show, but when I left the show was over."
That's grade-A trash talk, McGregor-esque even.
In the mean time, fans watching on have become armchair psychologists. Now it's my experience that the vitriol that usually infests the YouTube comments section is unfit to ever see the light of day, however many of the comments on the Embedded video are highlighting a consensus the likes of which is rarely seen on YouTube.
McGregor is known for his ability to win the mental aspect of a fight before he even enters the octagon. The likes of Dustin Poirier and Jose Aldo are perhaps the best examples of minds broken by the Irishman before a punch was thrown. Both were first round finishes, the latter was over before Bruce Buffer had time to get his seat warm.
McGregor continued to let his emotions get the better of him at the open workouts (above) and fans will be worried that Diaz has managed to make anger cloud McGregor's clarity of thought. In a line which betrayed his anger and added to the ongoing rhetoric of team vs team, McGregor shouted, "Fuck team Diaz, and if you're down with team Diaz, then fuck you too!"
The crowd were eating it up, but look at Coach John Kavanagh in the corner. Hands on hips looking concerned, he cuts the figure of a worried man, and he has reason to be worried.
Diaz managed to do the same with Donald Cerrone in 2011, enraging him by knocking his hat from his head and pushing him away. Cerrone came into that fight enveloped in a red haze. He paid for that with a loss by unanimous decision, something he has openly put down to allowing his anger to change his fight plan.
McGregor has always said that there are 3 elements to breaking down a man, mental, physical, and verbal. It seems that for the first time in the 28-year-old's career in the UFC, he has lost the mental bout. . In fairness to McGregor, he said that the mental battle only counts for 5% of the overall fight and rejects that it gives him a clear advantage:
"Clear advantage? It gives me a slight nudge but the skills pay the bills and make no mistake about that."
We'll have to wait until UFC 202 on Saturday night to see how he fares coming into a fight having lost the mental element of the fight for the first time in his career.
