fight

"Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face" - Mike Tyson

It's 6:15 on Sunday morning. Two hours have passed since my confused alarm chimed on its day off. My tired eyes fixate on the screen illuminating the room, and the peace of dawn is broken by high-pitched growling of Joe Rogan and co. The television pixels construct an image from over 5,200 miles away, in Las Vegas, where one of the most important sporting events of the year has descended into unadulterated chaos.

Conor McGregor is not a personality associated with calm. The Irishman is the shot of whisky that so often fuels a late Saturday night - a figuration that has become a commercial reality through his Proper 12 venture - and one of few people on this planet that can get me to set a 5:15am alarm on a Sunday morning. His opponent, Khabib Nurmagomedov, personifies everything expected with a bruiser from the Dagestan region of Russia: unaesthetic, rough, robust.

Three minutes and three seconds into the fourth round of the biggest UFC fight of all time, the tactical skill of Nurmagomedov choked the ego of McGregor. After months of media attention, hype and cash, the Russian bear suffocated the octagon's green and gold oxygen supply to the point of blurry-eyed submission. For ten seconds, Khabib was the golden boy and his legacy was stamped in the blood-stained canvas of the UFC.

Then the Dagestan fighter initiated a riot. As he flew over the cage and towards McGregor's team, the glitz of Las Vegas descended into a brawl outside your local Wetherspoons. The technical quality that illuminated a championship fight became a distant memory as wild, un-calculated punches were thrown from all parties. It was raw violence,  but I couldn't stop watching.