Conor McGregor and Holly Holm losses knock UFC for a loop

"After 16 years in this business," Dana White was saying, a wry smile on his face, "the one thing you don't ever do is think you know what's going to happen. Because you don't."

The UFC president was standing at a press conference podium in the bowels of MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas early Sunday morning, 90 minutes after what he termed "pretty much the biggest fight ever" for his company had left the 14,898 in the building stunned.

White's biggest male star, the brash Conor McGregor, had just been unceremoniously silenced in the UFC 196 main event. Before that, the promotion's highest-profile female champion, Holly Holm - still riding the buzz from snatching the bantamweight belt from Ronda Rousey a few months earlier - had been dethroned in a fight she had seemed to be controlling.

Both of these stars had been expected to figure prominently in the planning for this summer's milestone UFC 200 event. Now it's back to the drawing board for White, who would have you believe this is the way things always go.

Still, the UFC president and the sport's fans can be forgiven for dwelling on what might have been.

For Holm, there had been the option to wait for a rematch with Rousey, which White and many around mixed martial arts believe would have been the most lucrative fight in the sport's history. Instead, the Albuquerque, N.M., fighter known as "The Preacher's Daughter" elected to make her first title defense against Miesha Tate, a former champ in the Strikeforce promotion who had also fought for the UFC belt once before, unsuccessfully.

On this night, the 29-year-old Tate (18-5) was on the verge of losing a title bid again, trailing on all three judges' scorecards as the five-round fight entered its final two minutes. But then the wrestling-savvy Tate, who hails from Tacoma, Wash., and now trains in Las Vegas, took the champ out of her element. Holm, 34, is a multiple-time world boxing titlist whose standup game is her strength. Her takedown defense had kept her standing except in the second round, when Tate rode her on the mat for nearly the entire five minutes. Tate couldn't repeat that success, though, until her relentlessness finally paid off.

"She's a scrapper," said Holm (10-1) after suffering her first MMA defeat. "She can be behind in a fight, and she can still finish. I let my guard down, and it cost me the fight."

There was a scramble on the mat, and the challenger ended up securing a rear naked choke. Holm had escaped a similar predicament in the second, but not this time. The end came at 3 minutes 30 seconds of the round. "I was a pitbull on a bone," said Tate. "I wouldn't let go."

Conor McGregor might still end up on the UFC's most glittery summertime marquee, but his appearance won't carry as much weight as before. The 27-year-old Irishman (19-3) became featherweight champ in December, and immediately set his sights on bigger things. He was scheduled to challenge Rafael Dos Anjos for the lightweight belt at Saturday's event, and if successful would have become the first fighter to simultaneously hold straps in two UFC weight classes. But that bid was put on ice less than two weeks before showtime after Dos Anjos broke his foot in training.

The UFC brought in Nate Diaz as a replacement opponent and made the bout at welterweight. This was an accommodation for Diaz (19-10), who is a natural lightweight but felt he didn't have adequate time to make the 155-pound limit. The weight designation also was symbolic. In recent days, McGregor had openly talked about how he planned to dispose of Diaz, then challenge Robbie Lawler for the 170-pound belt at UFC 200.

It was not to be. Diaz, a feisty 30-year-old out of Stockton, Calif., withstood the best that McGregor could dish out. The Irishman had knocked out his past five opponents, but this foe wasn't impressed. "I've been fighting grownups for 10 years, 12 years," Diaz had said to McGregor during a prefight press conference. "You knocked out three midgets and you're pumped up."

McGregor did bloody Diaz in the first round, but he never backed him up. And once Diaz, the taller fighter with longer reach, was in rhythm and consistently connecting with his own shots in Round 2, McGregor began attacking from distance and his punches were falling short. Just past the midpoint of the round, Diaz wobbled McGregor with a right hand, then bullied him against the fence.

They separated and traded punches, with Diaz again getting the better of the exchange. McGregor recognized this and shot for a takedown, which Diaz, a jiu-jitsu black belt, turned into a guillotine attempt. He abandoned that in favor of landing elbows on the ground until McGregor rolled over, gave up the rear naked choke, and quickly tapped out with 48 seconds left in the round.

In a contest between two fighters who like to talk to their opponents in the cage, Diaz got in the last word. "I didn't have a camp, so I knew I was going to have a slow first round," he said. "And then when it started to turn around, I saw the beginning of the end. And I started telling him, 'It's going to get worse from here on.' "

McGregor, who saw a 15-fight winning streak snapped, acknowledged that he'd bitten off more than he could swallow with the jump from 145 pounds to 170. "Usually, when I fight a man in the division I am champion in, they crumble under those shots," he said. "But Nate took them very well."

So there won't be a Lawler fight, and there won't be a Dos Anjos fight. McGregor plans to defend his 145-pound belt next, against either the man from whom he took it, José Aldo, or former lightweight champ Frankie Edgar. And he's aiming for July's UFC 200. "I'm not cut," said McGregor. "I'm simply heartbroken."

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Jeff Wagenheim

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