With Conor McGregor, going big is the only way he knows how

Late last week, when Conor McGregor went bigger than everyone else at the UFC’s "Go Big" event, it felt a little bit like an unveiling for the monster we've created. If you didn’t see it, do yourself a favor.

McGregor picked fights with the entire pantheon of fighters who were gathered to bring home the sheer immensity of the occasion. Holly Holm, sitting right next to McGregor, was like the bookish girl who got stuck next to the obnoxious kid in class. She was mortified. Donald Cerrone, sitting directly behind McGregor, was ready to kick that Irish ass. He had ten gallons of descending shadow playing over his features the entire time. In fact, Cerrone was so caught up in McGregor’s tirade(s) about the stumblebums around him and the mired lightweight division that he coolly pointed out that McGregor hadn’t beat anybody at 145.

Poor Chad Mendes, who gave it the old college try at UFC 189, was sitting right next to Cerrone, pinching himself to see if he was real. McGregor had everyone forgetting their manners. He was turning polite company rude. He was presenting himself as a lottery ticket that could make any of them rich. He did this all with his fly down.

It was perhaps the high point of his out-of-cage experiences.

McGregor stood out as something extraordinarily singular in a solitary sport. He saw no need to be civil to the people who share his profession. He didn’t respect a single soul, least of all Jose Aldo, the lone panel guest who has a date lined up to do him bodily harm. He turned the game’s greatest fighters into shrinking violets. McGregor offended everyone from 155-pound champ Rafael dos Anjos to Joseph Duffy, the last man to beat him. Dan Henderson stood by like a farm animal chewing cud as the farmer streaked through the barnyard banging pots and pans.

Or so it seemed. Compared to McGregor, everybody else seemed a little slow-witted and ordinary.

Even more remarkable was that he injected himself into every equation. As the event went on, it wasn’t Frankie Edgar against Chad Mendes, it was Mendes getting a full camp against McGregor, or Edgar getting his shot at McGregor. It wasn’t Cerrone and RDA, it was Cerrone and McGregor. It wasn’t Duffy and Dustin Poirier, it was Poirier getting another crack at McGregor. It was Duffy, the "journeyman," against McGregor. It was everyone against McGregor, which, if you want in on a secret, is something like achieving the very essence of the fight game.

To steal shows and activate your imagination. To enter your name in every scenario. To dwarf common men.

Yet, at the same time, man…the UFC’s "Go Big" event also felt like the moment McGregor’s booming amplitude began to hurt our ears a little bit. What was it that Abraham Lincoln said? If you want to test a man’s character, give him power? McGregor, in his short time in the fight game, is already well on his way to becoming insufferable. Everybody sees this. It’s a matter of time. He’s like the spoiled child that we’ve enabled, and he can’t help himself. The only thing that outshines his talent is his ability to tell you about it. His confidence borders on absurd. He’s new money, and he’ll rub it in your face with two shaking fistfuls.

"Uncle Frank," from some ivory tower, has created a monster.

We all have. How long can this continue? How will he evolve?

See, these are the underpinnings in a case like McGregor’s. It’s an extraordinary naivety that simply can’t last. The only thing we like better than hoisting a star into the sky is tearing it back down. There were a dozen fighters up on the panel at the "Go Big" event chomping at the bit to be the ones to start him towards ruin. The more McGregor talks, the more comeuppance ripens as a side plot.

Still, you’ve got to respect his ability to just go for it.

"F*ck everybody else up here," McGregor said at one point, as Dana White turned a little red with admiration. "I’m the money fight in the division."

It’s true. McGregor is the firebrand of the sport. He gets it. He has no parallels. Even the game’s most transcendent star, Ronda Rousey, finds herself in competition against McGregor. They are vying for gate records. Rousey is headed for Etihad Stadium in Melbourne, Australia, which can cram 75,000 souls into its confines.

McGregor is headed some place less certain, but nobody in the sport embodies the now quite like him. UFC said to "Go Big," and McGregor got the memo. He went big. Maybe too big. Maybe to the point where he actually outdid himself.