Conor McGregor ‘sportsperson of the year’? Depends if you like the stink of the coliseum

The smouldering question hovering over Saturday night’s RTÉ Sportsperson of the Year awards bash is, of course: will the Notorious be in town?

Conor McGregor is, unquestionably, Ireland’s international sporting sensation of the year, ‘taking’ New York last month and featuring at #85 on the Forbes list of eye-wateringly wealthy sports stars, with a year-end haul of $22 million.

Just four million of that total came from endorsements, as opposed to, say, the promotional obligations which Rory McIlroy parlayed into 35 million.

It’s safe to say that the presence of Conor McGregor would add a frisson to the evening.

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In December 2015 the Notorious CMG explained his absence from the awards thus: “Credit from RTÉ is not what I seek”, an intriguing and quasi-mystical explanation which he regrettably destroyed with the prosaic clarification: “It is cash.”

That’s clear enough and the old heat-seeking went well on the financial front so here’s hoping he may be better fixed for tomorrow night’s knees-up.

It’s will, frankly, be a disappointment to his legion of Irish fans if McGregor does not mix it with the best in the traditional old-world sports of running, boat-rowing, boxing and the like.

See him pull up outside the steps of Montrose in the most expensive set of wheels since whenever it was that CJH last sat down with David Hanly for a lunchtime grilling in studio one.

Yes, see the Notorious peacock-ing through the room to the soundtrack of Starboy, modelling the most fantastic coat worn by any man since Luther Vandross last threw on his Gucci mink-and-alligator three-quarter length.

And if there is to be a prickly-interview moment then it must be – can only be – with Marty Morrissey, who beneath the easy-like-Sunday-morning manner can muster – when required – that One-Flew-Over-The-Cuckoo's Nest death-stare which sets all Clare men apart from the rest of us . Yes, even including the men's former featherweight and current lightweight UFC world champion title holder.

Irish public

McGregor’s 2016 achievements and his presence on this year’s shortlist (which has already been debated with more passion and thoroughness than the homeless crisis) begs the question of where, exactly, the Dubliner stands in the estimation of the general Irish public.

Do we appreciate whom and what we have in our midst here?

McGregor, through his athletic excellence and his thirst for the fight and his torrent of personality, has become the totemic figure of a young sport which has made incredible commercial and popular strides in a very short time.

It’s 20 years since senator John McCain, a pivotal figure in having the nascent sport banned in many states across America, vilified mixed martial arts as “human cockfighting” and he spoke for millions in finding the spectacle distasteful.

Now, even McCain has given UFC a guarded blessing as its figures suggested a ready-made audience in waiting for a visceral, real life version of fight club.

UFC’s youth is at once its chief weapon and its disadvantage.

Its newness is one of the reasons why it has generated massive pay-per-view audiences who see in it the fierceness and rawness which has been weeded out of the slick, jaded sports of the establishment.

Against that, because it is just starting out, MMA lacks the rich political and social history of football or its 20th century antecedent, boxing, with its many and varied human triumphs and tragedies and cult figures.

MMA arguably has now what boxing had in the days of Jack Johnson and Jess Willard: an unstoppable momentum and the appeal of the illicit.

You either like a sport in which blood is spilled or not and UFC’s got the vivid, real stink of the coliseum about it.

It thrives on bringing both its participants and audiences to the hinterland of grave danger. But then, choose your poison: doesn’t that also apply to rugby? To hunt racing? To motor sport?

Undisputed king

And McGregor, the Dubliner who set about infiltrating and conquering this world with a fantastically mad zeal, is its undisputed king.

McGregor went from the outsider to the ultimate big-city toast and he did so lightning quick. So maybe there is a Gatsby quality to his story in more than just his appreciation of a beautiful shirt.

But here’s the thing.

At the awards on Saturday, McGregor's achievements are pitched against two Olympic silver medallists: Annalise Murphy and the O'Donovan brothers. The contrast could not be sharper. In Ireland, Olympic medallists are a rarity and therefore duly remembered.

It’s difficult to gauge whether the UFC has truly ‘arrived’ here in Ireland or not. For sure, it has a significant army of devotees who are exceptionally sensitive to any criticism or negative comment about their sport, dismissing all contrary opinion, often with justification, as evidence of ignorance.

But would the fan-base exist in such great numbers without McGregor?

If McGregor had decided the life of a plumber was the safer bet, would there be still be a division of Irish UFC devotees storming Las Vegas and Manhattan over the past two years?

If McGregor retires this weekend, will UFC grow and thrive in Ireland?

If, say, McGregor decided tomorrow that he was going to give acting a shot, would Ireland’s media outlets still cover UFC as a sport?

Yes, it’s mad popular but has it shed its underground cloak – and does it even want to?

Showman’s front

McGregor has always blazed a defiant indifference towards the establishment but he knows that it’s just a showman’s front.

Like any nice Irish lad made good, he has happily sat down on the Late Late Show sofa in RTÉ when invited; he's even been interviewed for GQ by Alastair Campbell.

But he is also one of the few Late Late Show guests also capable of commanding a guest seat on the late night talk shows of American television.

In tandem with his unparalleled rise within UFC, McGregor has demonstrated the sharpest of acumen when it comes to playing the media game of self-promotion and he is a world name now.

Yet it’s still not clear as to how he is regarded in mainstream Ireland.

For many sports fans, the performance of the O’Donovan brothers in Rio was an exceptional moment in Irish sport. It helped that their post-race comic performances offset the solemnity and heroism of what they just achieved in the water.

Like all Irish Olympians, they prepared for Rio in virtual obscurity and lived on the kind of money that would be loose change for the Notorious at this stage.

So the choice between sports and circumstance could not be clearer this evening.

All awards in all disciplines are absurdly arbitrary anyway and shouldn’t be taken too seriously. But tonight’s ceremony represents an interesting snapshot of where MMA and its unstoppable front man have come from in Ireland – and of where it’s travelling to.