Conor McGregor: Did he make this freak show or did the freak show make him?

This is his church, where he can do no wrong no matter what wrong he does

By the standards of Las Vegas, this was pretty much normal fair.

By the standards of everywhere and everyone else, this was still pretty crass.

By the standards of Conor McGregor though, there was a moment at Thursday's press conference in Las Vegas when the mask suddenly slipped and the parody subsided and you realised the old him is still buried in there somewhere. If this is to be his last fight - and we only say that because of the melancholic tone of his words combined with the notion of a man cage-fighting when he doesn't need to - it's comforting to know that he can still come across as a decent scamp who has done well for himself. All has not been lost on the way.

It was towards the end of proceedings, and he was busy thanking others. You read that correctly. At a time and in a place when the entire concept of the Me Too movement is on show and fighting for its life, so much of McGregor can be about Me Only. Yet here he was thanking Dana White for what he has done with and for the UFC, thanking his management team for the money he has made, thanking the fans for again following him here in religious droves.

Even a ludicrous question about his mental warfare having surpassed that of Muhammad Ali was thankfully beaten back down by humility, as he talked about how having his name mentioned in the same sentence was borderline embarrassing.

For a moment you wondered has anyone seen Conor McGregor?

For another moment you wondered if this is the danger of normalisation, of moving our posts due to the sheer quantity of idiocy we've so often had to endure from him, as if any flickers of light are now seen as a full-on sun rise.

Of course the way it played out helped. His opponent Khabib Nurmagomedov had shown up at three o'clock on the dot, grabbed a microphone and said he wasn't in the business of hanging around as he'd a schedule to keep and he's always tight on the weight and often fails to make it. And as the Russian talked alone, he sounded like a regular sportsman and made this come across as a regular sporting event (something that should be taken as a compliment by those who love the UFC, but feel the need to rant and rave at any outside assessment). "I won't think beyond this fight," he said. "I'm not underestimating him," he said. "He's not my problem," he said. "Anger can have a good or bad effect," he said.

Then as promised he left, the odd tricolour rolled into a ball flung at his entourage as they exited, with Irish fans chanting "s**t the bus" in pseudo-Russian accents in reference to the attack in New York six months ago on him and other fighters before an event there. It's at such moments when transcribing such words that you wonder where we are going as a society, and it makes you consider that these are the sort of people that think their banter is at such proportions it must be shared with all other passengers loudly on Trans-Atlantic flights to these fight nights

McGregor was in jovial mood on Thursday night (Getty Images)

This is a weird place though for those that show up don't want any calm, solely ratty chaos. Many McGregor fans filled bins with half-full cans having been told there was no getting them through security, a hat tip to the stereotype their hero helps portray. Once inside they booed and insulted, roaring out as if the zenith of their being is for others to hear them.

They were here for the outrageous, never realising that when everything is outrageous, nothing is. And they briefly got what they came for when McGregor finally showed late, storming on stage with the ultra-aggression of an ego that hasn't been told in years that he might possibly and occasionally be wrong. The tirade followed. "He knew what he f**king signed up for... I don't know where the little fool is... it is what it is, f**k it, these things happen... get that man into a sauna and cook him like the little chicken-jawed rat that he is... that little backwards c**t... his manager is a little snitch, terrorist rat."

That it's become frankly boring is proof that most things can indeed be normalised, a warning to other areas of the world that are far more important and influential than he ever can or will be.

Nurmagomedov was less than pleased with McGregor's late show (Getty Images)

With no one to bounce off though, here was a 30-year-old multimillionaire who at the start of this decade was turned down for a job in a bookmakers and queued for social welfare, in a Las Vegas auditorium full of those he can conduct with the flick of his finger. There's much to criticise him for but that element is worth consideration. He grabbed his whiskey bottle of the brand he's launched and told the crowd to scream, "F**k the Jameson brothers".

They belched it out.

This is his church. Granted it's not great, even by the standard of churches.

But there is another way to look at this freak show that often gets bypassed. Instead picture the stage and McGregor as a mirror of all those staring up at him. The late philosopher Denis Dutton once aptly said: “Dumbing down takes many forms. Art that is good for you, museums that flatter you, universities that increase your self-esteem. Culture, after all, is really about you.” In 2018 we get what we want, not need, to the point where McGregor is a form of culture.

McGregor held court - eventually (Getty Images) (Getty)

As press we are complicit. In a relatively nascent sport in terms of forcing its way into the mainstream, many journalists aren't what we are accustomed too. A lot look like him and dress like him and talk like him. There's nothing wrong with any of that until it comes to fawning over him. One man asked about this whiskey brand and questioned the quality for some reason, to which he was told to "ask me b**locks". Feeling the need to jump to McGregor's defence as this descended into bad publicity, another grabbed the mic and asked can he delve into sales figures, looking to give McGregor an out. Then there's always an Irishman at these events down the back that reduces the whole thing to a love-in.

So what if the media helped created McGregor?

Then there are the fans in the seats. The Irish have a reputation here and whether it was ever the isle of saints and scholars to be trite about it is debatable. But a wander around The Park MGM confirms that it is not anymore.

Yet these people too help make McGregor what he is, telling him he can do no wrong no matter what wrong he does. They accept and celebrate whatever limit he takes his conversation to, and abuse those that try and tell them it went too far, always bringing the bar with them no matter how low it all goes.

How they felt about such an ending to this press conference and such a briefly accessible and real and decent McGregor is hard to gauge. But it was briefly a strange sort of calm.

Then again, tomorrow it not a normal type of storm.