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Conner McGregor
A GLOBAL icon for whom the only constraint is none whatsoever, who wears his vulgarity, bombast and disregard for humility as a badge of honour, what does MMA star and currently Ireland’s most famous son represent if not the moral void in which sits the values of an American Dream that stand as a grotesque perversion of the human condition?
Nietzsche’s “will to power” is embodied in the rise of Conor McGregor from a working-class housing estate in Dublin to the summit of fame and the riches of a latter day Crassus; riding the wave of a sport, mixed martial arts, which acquaints with the most primal of our origins, rooted in brute cruelty and a thirst for glory that must needs can only be satiated at the expense of others.
From a distance, McGregor appears to be living the “dream” — which has it that holds that the summit of human happiness, meaning and value is a place of unbounded fame, riches and, with it, the licence to proclaim: “Fuck you” to the world of mere mortals that lies beneath and from you have escaped.
Mary Kom’s fists made history in the boxing world. Malak Mesleh’s never got the chance. One story ends in glory, the other in grief — but both highlight the defiance of women who dare to fight, writes JOHN WIGHT
The Khelif gender row shows no sign of being resolved to the satisfaction of anyone involved anytime soon, says boxing writer JOHN WIGHT
When Patterson and Liston met in the ring in 1962, it was more than a title bout — it was a collision of two black archetypes shaped by white America’s fears and fantasies, writes JOHN WIGHT
In the land of white supremacy, colonialism and the foul legacy of the KKK, JOHN WIGHT knows that to resist the fascism unleashed by Trump is to do God’s work
