ANALYSIS: McGregor’s weaknesses were exposed by Mendes, but he showed a champion’s calm in victory

Oddly enough, the most difficult fight to predict on UFC 189's main card, turned out precisely as many had expected.

It seemed that everyone, even the casual MMA fan, came to the same conclusion before the main event at UFC 189. The consensus was that Mendes would win the battle on the mat and McGregor would win the exchanges on the feet. That is exactly how the interim featherweight title fight played out. While The Notorious put in an absolutely incredible performance against Money and backed up all the talk yet again, he didn't walk away from the fight unscathed.

The Kryptonite question

Just as the majority of the MMA cognoscenti suspected, Mendes showed that wrestling is the main weakness in McGregor's game. There's no hiding it now, McGregor's stance makes him susceptible to the takedown. Mendes completed 75% of his takedowns with relative ease in round one. While McGregor survived every shot in the opening round, he couldn't defend them.

Wide open

One of the revelations from UFC 189 was that the Notorious' iron chin holds up, even when eating the best from arguably the heaviest hitter in the division. While the ability to absorb a punch is an extremely useful weapon in McGregor's arsenal, the reason why we know he possesses it is because Mendes tagged him quite a bit. Mendes found a home for 65% of his significant strike attempts and most of those landed flush to McGregor's head. No matter how solid your chin is, it will eventually deteriorate. McGregor may want to look at new ways of avoiding getting hit to increase the longevity of his time at the zenith of the sport.

Positives

It was a title-winning performance, so obviously there is a plethora of positive things to take away from it. We already know how elite McGregor's striking game is, but one thing that was glaringly obvious from the win was his use of body shots to break his opponent down. Some argue that Mendes tired himself out with his ground game, which also contributed to his fatigue, but probably not as much as the body shots he took early in the fight. The spinning back kick that thudded Mendes' liver in round one in particular seemed to significantly diminish his movement. After that kick connected, Mendes became less sure-footed, his mouth flopped open to allow more oxygen in and his hands dropped slightly to favour the body. These are all signs of a fighter who has been hurt by a body shot, which can be the most debilitating strike in the game. It's important to note that this is just one of 25 strikes to the body the Notorious landed throughout the 10-minute war. We know that Mendes was able to hold McGregor down on the mat. He spent nearly the entirety of the second stanza on top of The Notorious. However, McGregor's reaction to being put on his back was nothing short of exceptional. Even when Mendes was peppering his face with brutal elbows, he kept his composure and continued to talk trash and play mind games with his opponent. He also stayed quite active from the weaker position on the mat, landing 30% of his total strikes from his back. His grace under fire really paid off towards the end of the second round. When Mendes moved in for the kill with that guillotine attempt, he remained calm and instinctively slipped out of it. This ultimately lead to that beautiful right-left combination that ended the fight early. While McGregor's performance against Mendes was in equal parts calm, dogged and downright brilliant, it was far from perfect. Undoubtedly, Jose Aldo will have been watching and noticed these holes in his game, which is pretty dangerous information for someone who's as obsessed with winning as the champion. However, after such a phenomenal win against a fighter who put Aldo through 25 minutes of hell in the lion's den, it's hard to back against the Irishman unifying that belt. Not to unfairly raise everyone's expectations or anything.