Conor McGregor tried to bet UFC owners $3 million he'd beat Chad Mendes in 2nd round
Conor McGregor has no problem calling his shot, and he's willing to put his money where his mouth is when it comes to making what look like outlandish predictions.
McGregor has become accustomed to not only telling an opponent how he will beat them, but he's also picking the round in which it will happen.
Back at UFC 189 when then featherweight champion Jose Aldo was forced off the card due to injury, top-ranked contender Chad Mendes was brought in as a replacement. Mendes was as stylistically different from Aldo as any fighter could be.
He was a short, muscular wrestler with world-class grappling and one-punch knockout power in his hands. But McGregor didn't blink when it came to his confidence, and he was so sure that he'd finish Mendes that he tried to engage UFC president Dana White and UFC co-owner Lorenzo Fertitta in a lucrative bet about when he would win the fight.
"He tried to bet my partner and I, Lorenzo (Fertitta) $3 million that he would knock out Chad Mendes in the second round," White revealed on The Jalen and Jacoby Show. "Thank god we didn't bet him because he knocked out Chad Mendes in the second round. He's done everything he said he would do."
From the sound of things, McGregor is making plenty of money with his fights if he's willing to put up $3 million on a bet for a matchup that he took on two weeks' notice.
White says that's just another thing to admire about McGregor because what looks like trash talk on the surface is actually just the supreme confidence that he has in coming away from any fight victorious.
No matter how crazy something might sound when McGregor says it, he's backed it up every single time in the Octagon and at this point, there's no more doubting him.
"He backs up everything he says," White said. "You think it's crazy talk when he says he's going to knock out Jose Aldo in under four minutes of the first round -- a guy who hasn't lost in 10 years -- and then he goes in and knocks him out in 13 seconds."
