Conor McGregor said ‘Don’t blink, I’m coming out the gate fast’ ahead of his welterweight fight with Nate Diaz.
The Notorious is ready to send out a warning shot to the 170lb division with a big win against Diaz as he looks to set up a potential title superfight against welterweight champion Robbie Lawler.
The Irishman has already predicted he will score yet another first round knock-out in the UFC 196 main event on Saturday.
Many doubted the 27-year-old last time out when he claimed he would knock out featherweight king Jose Aldo out inside the first round – and look how that went down.
Aldo was shakily picking himself up off the canvas 13 seconds later, minus a belt thanks to McGregor’s left hand.
The thing was that the Irishman told everyone the exact sequence that would lead to Aldo’s downfall – he would come out swinging, over reach and McGregor would pop him off with the left.
He was even filmed practising that very shot in the changing rooms right before the fight.
So obviously we’ve been hanging on McGregor’s every word ahead of the Diaz fight to see what he’s got in his locker.
We caught this one interview right after the first press conference when Dana White confirmed the Diaz fight.
Even though he only knew Diaz was his opponent for less than 24 hours, he’d already called the shot he was going to down him with.
At 2:30 into this video McGregor tells us that he plans to take Diaz down with the left upper cut on March 5.
https://youtu.be/OIrJPssOdWs?t=151
In his words ‘the left upper cut will ping him clean’ despite the Stockton fighter’s superior reach and range.
It looks like the Dubliner has been working on this exact shot. We spotted him drilling the left hand upper cut during the open workouts before the fight. Just look at the speed and power on it…
That's a baaaad man! #UFC196 https://t.co/H17WdjYM2o
— SportsCenter (@SportsCenter) March 3, 2016
Have a look from 1:40 seconds in here too with the SBG man working the long upper cut…
With McGregor’s history of visualising sequences, drilling specific shots and then coming good on his predictions, we’re not going to doubt him.
If we were betting men or we had money, we’d be sticking it all on this…
