Certain people are just destined to succeed.
Hard work and luck are obviously crucial along the way but there are certain superstars who were always going to make it to the top.
One could put forward Conor McGregor as the perfect example as he transformed from a social welfare-claiming young Dubliner into the biggest draw in all of combat sports over the span of just a few years.
And it’s clear that UFC President Dana White has taken the lion’s share of credit for McGregor’s meteoric rise to the top of the fight game.
As part of an ongoing UFC anti-trust lawsuit, White was recently deposed and confidently claimed that he’d “turned him into a star.”
Mixed martial arts journalist John S. Nash revealed White’s claims in a tweet on Wednesday evening.
https://twitter.com/heynottheface/status/966423968323321856
White said: “Four years ago, Conor McGregor was available to everybody. Bellator, ONE FC, UFC, everybody out there. Do you know who went out- he was- he was 7 and 2, Okay? Guy’s record was 7 and 2. There’s a zillion of them, right? I went out and got Conor McGregor. I saw him, I liked his personality, and I turned him into a star, one of the biggest stars on earth right…”
Now while White undeniably played a role in McGregor’s success, being the Irishman’s promoter, it’s perhaps a bit generous for him to take so much credit, and it should also be pointed out that McGregor was in fact 12-2 when he was signed by the UFC and was the brightest prospect to emerge from the European MMA scene.
We, at JOE, couldn’t help but be reminded of Tim Sherwood’s insistence that he was responsible for Harry Kane’s development because it was he who gave Kane the chance to break into the Tottenham Hotspur first team.
The gift that keeps on praising himself https://t.co/Yy9IKY1eW5
— FootballJOE (@FootballJOE) August 19, 2017
Last August, Sherwood famously claimed that “it was the belief of me, to be fair, that I needed to stop the fears of the managers who were managing at the time, like Harry Redknapp and Andre Villas-Boas,” in relation to Kane’s meteoric rise to prominence.
It was during Sherwood’s six-month spell as Spurs boss that the forward proved himself worthy of a starting role with the North London side and Sherwood never turns down the opportunity to remind us.
Call us crazy but we reckon that both McGregor and Kane would have made it if there had been a different UFC President or a different Spurs manager in place at the time both stars made their respective breakthroughs.
But there’s just no talking to some people…
