With a win at UFC 205, Conor McGregor may have claim to the best two-year run in history

On Sept. 27, 2014, at UFC 178 in Las Vegas, Conor McGregor knocked out Dustin Poirier in less than two minutes.

It was a statement victory. McGregor, up until that point, had been regarded as little more than a loudmouth who was getting favorable treatment by the UFC. Featherweights who had never broken out of the pack postured to get a fight against the bombastic Irishman, figuring it was the quickest way to get ahead.

While McGregor talked a big game about making it to the top of the sport, few took him seriously. Indeed, the victory over Poirier was his first over an opponent who was ranked in the division, and while the bout was on the main card, it was neither the main event nor the co-feature that night at the MGM Grand Garden Arena.

“The division seems to be full of rookies and has-beens,” McGregor said at the time, “I’m just sitting here enjoying myself, collecting these checks on my way, eliminating each one.”

People scoffed at such comments, but who’s laughing now?

Fast forward to Tuesday, two years to the date after the Poirier fight. McGregor was front and center at The Theater at Madison Square Garden for a UFC 205 press conference. The historic first-ever UFC card in Manhattan on Nov. 12 will be topped by McGregor’s quest for history. The reigning featherweight champion will go up in weight and challenge lightweight champion Eddie Alvarez in the main event, his attempt to become the first fighter in the company’s 22-year history to simultaneously hold two championships.

If McGregor gets the job done, it won’t be a stretch to call McGregor’s run the greatest two-year span for any fighter in the history of the sport, taking the entire picture of performance in the cage, business numbers, and star power into account.

There are, of course, others who have had runs who will be long remembered. Jon Jones, for one, was all but unstoppable as a competitor until he was done in, at least temporarily, by a self-sabotage that has put him on the sidelines during what should be the peak of his career. Even considering that though, he still managed to defeat five former UFC titleholders in a row at one point in 2011-12, something that shouldn’t be overlooked.

Conor McGregor will face Eddie Alvarez for the lightweight title at UFC 205. (Getty)

Nor should the accomplishments of Dan Henderson. Henderson simultaneously held two weight-class titles in PRIDE in 2007, making him the only fighter ever to hold two versions of what were widely regarded as world championships in their day. Henderson had McGregor’s same take-on-all-comers attitude throughout the course of his legendary career, even taking on and defeating heavyweight legend Fedor Emelianenko in Strikeforce.

Emelianenko, for his part, had an incredible win streak in PRIDE.

And Ronda Rousey built the women’s bantamweight division with her efforts.

But while they’re all exemplary in their own rights, no one has put together the entire package the way McGregor has.

Jones likely had the most noteworthy stretch in terms of pure caliber of competition, but he has never come close to touching McGregor’s numbers on pay-per-view. His biggest fight by far, a grudge match against Daniel Cormier at UFC 182 which was boosted by video clips of an infamous hotel brawl, didn’t come close to McGregor’s top three fights: Last December’s knockout of Jose Aldo (an estimated 1,400,00 PPV buys); his first fight with Nate Diaz in March (estimated at 1,600,000) and the rematch in August (a rumored UFC-record 1,650,000). Jones-DC did approximately 800,000 buys.

Indeed, it’s not just that McGregor has by and large backed up his talk in the Octagon. It’s the entire package.

He’s been willing to shoulder promotional burdens to a degree only Ronda Rousey could understand. McGregor went from the Poirier fight to a bout with Dennis Siver that was heavily pushed on an NFL conference championship Sunday in 2015; to what was supposed to be a fight against Jose Aldo, bolstered by a worldwide press junket, which ended up with McGregor winning an interim title from Chad Mendes; followed by the 13-second knockout of Aldo to win the title when they finally met in December.