McGregor: I’ve lost my mind, like Van Gogh
It looks like the UFC’s interim featherweight champion, Conor McGregor, is crazy serious about his drive to become “the best of all time.”
The outspoken mixed martial artist has been waging Muhammad Ali-like mental warfare in advance of the biggest fight of his life.
It’s a cliché of clichés to say the fight business is tough. But what sometimes gets lost in the predictable uproar over the UFC’s bloody combat is the extraordinary demands upon its athletes, who are often mis-characterized as thudding barbarians.
Strength, speed, endurance, intelligence—it’s all tested in the octagon, perhaps more than in any other sports environment, and weaknesses are mercilessly exposed.
The drive to be great—Kavanagh says his fighter is driven to be the best of all time—consumes McGregor’s life for now. I’m so lost in it that I can’t imagine anything else, he says softly.
Like Vincent Van Gogh. He lost his mind in his game. I have lost my mind also. But I am happy with that. I feel to reach the high pinnacle in anything you do, you must almost become insane to what you are doing.
