How Nate Diaz Beat the King

After battering Nate Diaz for a large portion of the fight, McGregor tires and starts to get caught repeatedly. McGregor is on shaky legs and shoots out of desperation and gets submitted by Rear-Naked choke in the second round.

Up until the last few minutes of the fight, McGregor had great success landing countless hard shots and was winning convincingly. What happened? How did Diaz start landing his shots?

In order to breakdown the fight, lets examine their styles.

Conor McGregor is an aggressive counter-puncher.

He gained massive popularity through his nasty knockouts. 17/19 wins are from KO/TKO, and all 3 loses were by submission.

Here’s his 13 second knockout over the undefeated featherweight champion, Jose Aldo.

McGregor’s aggression is applied through feints and taunts. His open guard bait his opponents to attack. Pay close attention to how his hands are raised and his head is seemingly open for attack.

McGregor’s speed and deadly accuracy allows him to slip and counter Diaz’s attacks but can’t seem to put him away.

Nate Diaz is an out–fighter.

Diaz likes to keep his range and work from the outside. His pivots and footwork allow him to maintain this range. As a Brazilian Jujitsu black belt, he is not lost when opponents close the gap.

Diaz is also infamous for his durability. Here’s Josh Thompson kicking his face.

McGregor has often looked his best when he is able to limit his opponents movements by cornering them, but Diaz is excellent at never moving straight back and turning his back away from the cage.

Diaz tried utilizing his 1,2 (jab, cross) combo that he famously landed on Donald Cerrone. However in this fight, Diaz was constantly getting countered off the right-jab and caught moving forward while throwing his left-cross.

Diaz begins to aim in anticipation that McGregor’s head will move and beings to land very consistently. In addition, McGregor becomes an increasingly easy target as he slows down. The tide turned when Diaz ultimately landed a hard 1,2 that rocked McGregor.

Slipping and countering simultaneously allows for quick and hard shots, but creates problems when the “slip” doesn’t happen. McGregor fails to slip the jab and gets caught with the cross a split second after, where before he was slipping the jab and naturally the cross would miss.

By finally seeing the “Notorious” Conor McGregor tired, we realize how much he relies on his speed for both his defense (slip) and offense (counter).

Aggressive fighters like Gennady Golovkin and Conor McGregor shut down their opponents lead hand by capitalizing on the openings it creates. They cannot push forward and open up their striking if their opponent is able to stick them with their jab and constantly move away.

Diaz as an out-fighter utilizes his jab and lead hook an insane amount and it sets up his cross. The jab had to be established and than the cross started landing over and over.

Diaz lands his 1,2 for the last time as the damaged and exhausted McGregor ducks under for a desperate take down on a Brazilian Jujitsu master..