Conor McGregor looked unstoppable.
He beat everyone he fought handily, predicted many of his victories with surprising accuracy,
and had unshakable confidence, but it always didn't go as planned.
The question is how has that lost impacted Conor's legendary confidence?
He's unlikely to share candidly, but if you know what to look for, you can see cracks
in that confidence and, hopefully, by the end of this video, you'll have a better idea
of how to quickly read anyone in your life, so that you'll know what they're really feeling
and not just what they're saying.
So let's begin with Conor.
First off, he used to talk trash about anything and everything.
Check out how he turned random situations into disses against Nate.
In the real world, trash talking doesn't always signal confidence, but in the fight game,
it's necessary to sell tickets.
The fact that Conor was so comfortable when talking smack and that he did it every opportunity
about whatever he could, was a strong indicator that he felt that confident.
He was even able to stay detached and would laugh in people's faces when they tried to face him.
You can see he's almost always able to get a rise out of his opponent without being flustered himself.
But that wasn't the only indicator of his confidence.
Another tell was how he would gesticulate.
Just check out here how he is with his hands in the first press conference for the initial
Nate Diaz fight.
Not only was he animated in his gesticulations like you saw there, but he seemed to have
total physical control of the space around him.
Even going so far as to kick up his feet and then snatch Jose Aldo's belt from him during
a press conference.
The way people inhabit the space around them is a great indicator of how dominant they feel.
Just think of how you act in your own home versus your new friends.
When you feel that things belong to you, you're more likely to kick your feet up, to be loud,
to take up lots of space, but when you feel as if you're in someone else's territory,
you're more likely to be respectful and deferential, and unimposing in how you treat the objects
around you.
Conor appeared to feel like he owned every single press conference, but what was most
miraculous about Conor was his predictions.
First off, they were full of vivid imagery.
He could paint a scene in your head and people would talk about what he'd said for weeks.
Those images became a keynote of his style and his supreme confidence.
Now, obviously, taking someone's head off and eating their carcass is an exaggeration,
but Conor would also get extremely specific and realistic predictions, and he'd often
get them dead on.
Perhaps, his best was in the Jose Aldo fight.
This specificity made it seem like Conor could literally see the future, like he was able
to visualize something and make it happen at will.
Visualizing, which we talked about in the last Conor video gave him a level of certainty
that no fighter seemed able to match.
Check it out in Conor's own words.
A lot of times people believe in certain things but they keep to themselves.
They don't put it out there.
If you truly believe in it, if you become vocal with it, you are creating that law of
attraction and it will become reality.
And that was, perhaps, Conor's biggest confidence advantage.
He could see those victories in vivid detail beforehand, and then, he spoke about those
victories with absolute conviction.
Because of that level of certainty, Conor never felt like he had to prepare for specific
opponents.
He didn't seemed to need to.
Here's what he said about fighting Nate Diaz on short notice.
So you can see there, leading up to the Diaz fight, it was business as usual for Conor.
He looks supremely confident.
He could see his victory in his head and he felt like the fight was in the bag.
All that he needed to do was hype the fight, because in his head, winning was a done deal,
and then, it wasn't.
Conor's bravado has changed quite a bit since he lost to Nate.
And if you know what to look for, there are tells that indicate he's not feeling quite
as confident as he used to.
So let's compare before and after.
First off, the new Conor's trash talk is far more vague with hardly any imagery.
Secondly, Conor is much more subdued when he makes his proclamations, with no big gesticulations
and no laughing like he used to.
Most interesting, though, is that Conor's predictions lack the clarity and the specificity
of his previous ones.
The way people speak usually gives a good indication of the way that those people are thinking.
And for Conor, this low detailed descriptions of his KOs indicate to me that he doesn't
have as specific an image of victory as he used to.
He may still think that he'll win, but he has definitely shied away from sharing his
visualizations and those were the ones that gave him such conviction, the ones that puts
fear into his opponent's heart.
He can't help but show that he has lost a bit of conviction.
It comes through in all of us.
It comes through in the way that we speak, in the way that we move.
And we can try to hide it but we wear our feelings for anyone with a keen eye to see,
but that is not the whole story because the lack of predictions, gesticulations, imagery,
enthusiasm doesn't always indicate a lack of confidence.
I want to throw in one more wrinkle to this video.
Let's look at Nate Diaz's pre-fight interviews.
His predictions were non-existent.
Nate also didn't seem to have any come backs for Conor.
He would just swear and say, "Yeah, right," whenever Conor dissed him.
He didn't seem to have strong eye contact either, which most people would read as a
lack of conviction.
And when he spoke about how the fight would go down, he left open the possibility that
he would lose. Just check it out.
So, should you take this to mean that Nate has even lower confidence than Conor?
NO.
The point of this video is that yes, you can use these tells to gauge someone's confidence,
but you cannot view those tells in a vacuum.
You must get a baseline to compare to.
After all, some people bite their nails all the time, not only when they're nervous.
Some people look angry all the time even when they're not.
So when reading anyone's body language, you must look at what is changing in them.
In Conor's case, we saw what his confident baseline looked like.
He was loud, brash, specific, and domineering, and what we're seeing now is not that.
From fight to fight, it's pretty clear that his confidence isn't where it used to be,
but for the most accurate read of anyone's mental state, you need to see how things shift
in a shorter period of time.
After all, Conor could have just been tired in the most recent press conferences, so we
need to see how his body language and tonality shift in a single interaction.
The only thing that we're looking for is how he changes when the topic changes.
Luckily, we have that.
Watch in this clip how Conor speaks much more animatedly and with much more conviction when
talking about defending his featherweight belt than when talking about his next fight
with Nate.
Watch particularly how Conor's voice speeds up and how he starts nodding, and how he hesitates
much less when speaking about the featherweight division.
Did you hear how Conor's voice sped up and how his enthusiasm swelled, and how he seemed
to be much more specific and full of adjectives when talking about the featherweight division,
and how that all slowed down, how hesitation crept in, and he got more vague when speaking
about Nate.
That is how you know that the conviction level is not the same for those two statements.
Conor doesn't have the bulletproof confidence that he used to, but that doesn't mean that
he won't win.
Confidence and competence are not the same thing.
The winner of this next fight will be determined by a lot of things outside the scope of this analysis.
Whoever wins, though, it's going to be very interesting to see how each fighter's confidence
responds.
If you, personally, are interested in something that you can do to boost your confidence in
those moments that you need it the most, there is an exercise that takes about 60 seconds
to do and you can create some seriously huge results.
It's something that can be very helpful when you start to feel anxious like before a presentation,
an interview, a date whatever.
So if you're curious what that is, and you want something to boost your confidence in
one minute, we've set up another video that you can get by clicking the box here.
It's gonna take you to another page where you just submit your email and you can get
access to that exercise right now to get that confidence boost.
If you have enjoyed this video and you want to be the first to know whenever we pose a
new one, go ahead, make sure to subscribe to this channel.
That way, we will pop up on your YouTube home screen every single week.
You won't have to worry about ever missing a new video.
Just go ahead, click the button here to do that and you'll get lots more breakdowns like
this, plus the best tips that I have for being your most charismatic confident self in the
moments that count the most.
And, of course, if you have any video suggestions, please go ahead, write those in the comments.
I have very much enjoyed doing this video on Conor.
There are actually other ones that I want to do on the way that he interacts with people
because I think he is quite charismatic in that, even though his confidence seems to
have shifted a bit.
So, whoever you're rooting for, I hope that you've enjoyed this video and I look forward
to seeing you in the next one.