Conor McGregor at the Garden: The Double-Champ Does What He Wants

On Friday afternoon, twenty-four hours before the grandest mixed-martial-arts event in history, Madison Square Garden was already full of fans who had gathered to watch the athletes weigh in. Actually, this was the second weigh-in of the day—and it wasn’t really a weigh-in at all. The competitors had already stepped onto a scale at a smaller, private weigh-in, which was quiet but consequential: one of them, Kelvin Gastelum, had been too heavy, and his fight against Donald (Cowboy) Cerrone had been cancelled. (These morning weigh-ins, quick and early, are designed to make it easier for athletes on a crash diet to rehydrate, and recover, before the fight.) By contrast, the afternoon weigh-ins were meaningless but loud, and therefore enjoyable, even if the results were already known: drama in the morning, dramatization in the afternoon.