UFC featherweight champion Conor McGregor and the man who is as real as it gets in a sport as real as it gets appeared recently on FOX Sports Live ahead of their fight Saturday night in the co-main event of UFC 196.

So grab some popcorn, and enjoy the fight before the fight.

“I’m going to toy with the young boy, I’m going to play with him,” said McGregor, as transcribed by Joe Callaghan for Ireland’s The Independent.

“He’s very, very predictable. I think the speed. . . people gave Jose the speed advantage but that was a mistake. Nate’s heavy on his right foot but now he’s like an injured gazelle.

“You’re like a gazelle, bunched up together and hoping you get spared. Your little gazelle friends are going to look through the cage (at you) getting eaten alive and they’re going to say ‘we’re never going to cross this river again’.”

“Skill-wise I made a big, big jump from the Mendes fight to Aldo. But I didn’t get to show a lot of that because the fight was over so quick.

“So part of me does want to stretch (this fight) out. I hope Nate can last. . . but I can’t hold my breath.”

Diaz offered a blunt response to McGregor’s colorful taunts.

https://www.instagram.com/p/BCiXxTYKXhO

“Yah right,” replied Diaz. “No one knows what a gazelle is anyway. This is America motherf***er, get it right.”

And with that, hosts Jay Onrait and Dan O’Toole cracked up. So in that exchange at the least, Nate Diaz got the last laugh.

And for those with a naturalist bent, who are not familiar with the gazelle: