– Paul Dollery reports from Las Vegas
“THIS DOES NOT feel like Vegas. It feels like Dublin.”
UFC commentator Joe Rogan summed up the mood at this evening’s UFC 189 weigh-ins.
Conor McGregor’s fans packed out the MGM Grand Garden Arena, as an estimated crowd of 10,000 turned up to see the Dubliner weigh in for his interim featherweight title bout against Chad Mendes.
Despite Chael Sonnen’s claims earlier this week that McGregor was struggling with the weight cut, both the Irishman and his American opponent tipped the scales below the 145lbs limit.
As you’d expect, a heated staredown followed between the rivals, who headline tomorrow night’s UFC 189 card here in Las Vegas.
“Chad is an overblown midget,” McGregor told Joe Rogan afterwards. “Tomorrow night, I’m going to cut him in half and raise gold for Ireland… for my country.”
Mendes, who appeared to revel in the hostile reception from the Irish fans, said: “This is fucking awesome, look at this shit! It’s time to take what’s mine, baby.”
All other UFC 189 fighters, including Irish pair Neil Seery and Cathal Pendred, also made weight — with the exception of Jeremy Stephens, who was fined 20% of his purse for coming in 3.5lbs over the limit for his featherweight bout against Dennis Bermudez.
That is a huge shame. I think anyone with an interest in Irish boxing would have thought he was one of our hopes for an Olympic medal.
Unfortunately if there is a hint of corruption it’s nothing new in boxing. It can have predetermined outcomes as bad as wwe sometimes.
Agreed, he demolished Kenny Egan a few months ago and we had high hopes for him, he still very young though and the lad will come good .
There was always a danger of this.
We saw what happened in Beijing with K Egan against the Chinese opponent. If the UEFA boys are taking backhanders the boxing boys are certainly taking them. Fighting a Turkish fighter in Turkey was always going to be a massive ask as a result. It’s a real pity but he’s young enough to come back for the next Olympics.
Boxing is becoming a farce though with the blatant fixing of fights.
Corruption is so widespread in Turkish sport it even has it’s own Wikipedia entry http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_Turkish_sports_corruption_scandal#section_1 And there are few “sports” as corrupt as boxing, there have been numerous examples in the past year alone. So whoever thought it a good idea to hold a boxing tournament in Turkey must’ve been a little on the slow side.
Im betting the judges were Turks as well knowing the ebu
The referee was from Kazakhstan, and the ringside judges from the Philippines, China, Italy, Algeria and Croatia.
Gutted…! Chin up Ward, long career ahead of you yet!
He’s used to hearing chin down :)
Boxing scoring is becoming like Eurovision voting.
And I made a spelling mistake great :O Your’s* don’t I look silly :L
Katie Taylor has one final chance to qualify for the Olympics but its in china probably against a Chinese girl so don’t rule out two of our best medal chances not even being at the games.
Cheers Niall :) and the mighty Joe will be back he’ll put every man he meets on the canvas from now on! That’ll leave no doubt about it!
Off the boxing topic, but it is incredibly annoying when you put some quotes in blue boxes and others not. Make up your mind! Plus if you use quotation marks they go at the beginning and end of a quote. You’re sincerely a stressed out leaving cert English student who struggles to correct all his own grammar etc. as well as the Journal’s! :) rant over.
Thanks Rob, nice to get some feedback on the quote boxes. Didn’t realise they were so off-putting.
As for the quotation marks — if the quote in question continues on over a few paragraphs, it’s accepted style not to use the close marks at the end of every paragraph, just at the end of the entire quote. Although I wouldn’t start doing that for the Leaving Cert, it’ll probably just stress you out even more!
Good luck with the exams.
Yeah@!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Get a life
Any word on how the protest went?
Gutted for Ward, such a talent.