How Nate Diaz Got Inside Conor McGregor's Head

Conor McGregor looked unstoppable. He beat everyone. He fought handedly, predicted many of his victories with surprising accuracy, and had unshakable confidence. But things didn't go as planned.

Out. That's it. He's got the shot.

The question is, how has that loss impacted Conor's legendary confidence? He's unlikely to share candidly, but if you know what to look for, you can see cracks in that confidence. And hopefully by the end of this video, you'll have a better idea of how to quickly read anyone in your life so that you know what they're really feeling and not just what they're saying. So let's begin with Conor. First off, he used to talk trash about anything and everything. Check out how he turned random situations into disses against Nate.

I'm going to talk about money because we are the business network and the business of the UFC and all that stuff.

I'll take over from here. Nate, you can bounce.

They want you to give us a quick count to 10, both of you gentlemen, if you don't mind. Just if you wouldn't mind counting to 10.

Nate can only count to five. He's like a little cholo gangster from.

The hood, but at the same time. But at the same time, he coaches kids to get to you on a Sunday morning and goes on bike rides with the elderly.

In the real world, trash talking doesn't always signal confidence, but in the fight game, it's necessary to sell tickets. The fact that Conor was so comfortable when talking smack and that he did it at every opportunity about whatever he could with was a strong indicator that he felt that confident. He was even able to stay detached and would laugh in people's faces when they tried to face him.

How close are you guys to each other right now? Like, could you reach out and swing at each other right now, Conor?

Nah, he's hiding somewhere.

I don't know where the. Still gotta walk.

You can see he was almost always able to get a rise out of his opponent without being flustered himself. But that wasn't the only indicator of his confidence. Another tell was how he would gesticulate. Just check out here how he is with his hands in the first press conference for the initial Nate Diaz fight on steroids.

That's your two boys, the scrap pack.

Remember that? Wham. Damn.

They were.

Did you know they were taking that stuff? Did you know they were taking that stuff?

Not only was he animated in his gesticulations like you saw there, but he seemed to have total physical control of the space around him even going so far as to kick up his feet and then snatch Jose Aldo's belt from him during a press conference. The way people inhabit the space around them is a great indicator of how dominant they feel. Just think of how you act in your own home versus a new friend's. When you feel that things belong to you, you're more likely to kick your feet up, to be loud, to take up lots of space. But when you feel as if you're in someone else's territory, you're more likely to be respectful, deferential and unimposing in how you treat the OB around you. Conor appeared to feel like he owned every single press conference. But what was most miraculous about Conor was his predictions. First off, they were full of vivid imagery. He could paint a scene in your head and people would talk about what he'd said. For weeks, those images became a keynote of his style and his supreme confidence.

Tomorrow I take his head clean off at that head, every featherweight's head.

I'm coming for I'm a lion in there and I'm not living. Your little gazelle friends are going to be staring through the cage looking at you, your carcass getting eaten alive, and they can do nothing. All they're going to do is say, we're never going to cross this river again.

Now, obviously, taking someone's head off and eating their carcass is an exaggeration, but Conor would also give extremely specific and realistic predictions, and he'd often get them dead on. Perhaps his best was in the Jose Aldo fight.

I said his right hand would get him into trouble. It's the shot I predicted. I said he'd overload on his right hand. I said I'd slip, I said I'd bang the left hook. And that's what happened.

This specificity made it seem like Conor could literally see the future, like he was able to visualize something and make it happen at will. Visualizing, which we talked about in the last Conor video, gave him a level of certainty that no fighter seemed able to match. Check it out. In Conor's own words, if you can.

See it here and you have the courage enough to speak, will happen. A lot of times. People believe in certain things, but they keep to themselves. They don't put it out there. If you truly believe in it, if you become vocal with it, you are creating that law of attraction and it will become reality.

And that was perhaps Conor's biggest confidence advantage. He could see those victories in vivid detail beforehand. And then he spoke about those victories with Absolute conviction. Because of that level of certainty, Conor never felt like he had to prepare for specific opponents. He didn't seem to need to. Here's what he said about fighting Nate Diaz on short notice.

Did you change your approach once it got named Nate for your fight?

The only approach I changed is I dug the grave a little bit wider, a little bit longer for Nate's skinny, fat, long body. That's the only difference I made.

So you can see there. Leading up to the Diaz fight, it was business as usual for Conor. He looked supremely confident. He could see his victory in his head and he felt like the fight was in the bag. All that he needed to do was hype the fight because in his head winning was a done deal and. And then it wasn't. Conor's bravado has changed quite a bit since he lost to Nate. And if you know what to look for, there are tells that indicate he's not feeling quite as confident as he used to. So let's compare before and after. First off, the new Conors trash talk is far more vague with hardly any imagery.

I have my reasons why I feel the fight went the way it went and now I have an opportunity to prove what I am saying. I like. I've proved many times before that what I say is correct. So I look forward to August 20th where I will come in correct, prepared, sharp and I will take this man out.

Secondly, Conor is much more subdued when he makes his proclamations with no big gesticulations and no laughing like he used to.

But this time I'm preparing for a tall, lanky, ugly Mexican sopa. And that's it. A lot more specific. I'm going to go in and put this man away and that's it.

Most interesting though is that Conor's predictions lack the clarity and the specificity of his previous ones.

I'm going to be a lot more prepared for a man that can, that can stay in there with me.

So.

But even still I struggle to give him past round three. If I was to make a prediction, which I will right now, I believe I will repay the favor and KO him inside the second round.

The way people speak usually gives a good indication of the way that those people are thinking. And for Conor, these low detail descriptions of his Kos indicate to me that he doesn't have as specific an image of victory as he used to. He may still think that he'll win, but he has definitely shied away from sharing his visualizations and those were the ones that gave him such conviction. The Ones that puts fear into his opponent's heart. He can't help but show that he has lost a bit of conviction. It comes through in all of us. It comes through in the way that we speak, in the way that we move. And we can try to hide it, but we, we wear our feelings for anyone with a keen eye to see. But that is not the whole story. Because a lack of predictions, gesticulations, imagery, enthusiasm doesn't always indicate a lack of confidence. I want to throw in one more wrinkle to this video. Let's look at Nate Diaz's pre fight interviews. His predictions were non existent.

Conor loves to make predictions about his fights. Nate, do you have a prediction for Saturday?

No, I don't.

Nate also didn't seem to have any comebacks for Conor. He would just swear and say, yeah, right. Whenever Conor dissed. He didn't seem to have strong eye contact either, which most people would read as a lack of conviction.

See?

Come and see what happens.

Yeah, right.

I told you, I'll put a hole in your face.

Yeah, right.

You'll be breathing out of your rest of your life.

Yeah, right.

Parting shots for one another.

And when he spoke about how the fight would go down, he left open the possibility that he would lose. Just check it out.

He's going to win by knocking you out. What's your approach? How do you think this fight's gonna go down?

Yeah, we're gonna see what happens to him Saturday. We'll see. Better hope he better hope so.

Should you take this to mean that Nate has even lower confidence than Connor? No. The point of this video is to show you that, yes, you can use these tells to gauge someone's confidence, but you cannot view those tells in a vacuum. You must get a baseline to compare to. After all, some people bite their nails all the time, not only when they're nervous, some people look angry all the time, even when they're not. So when reading anyone's body language, you must look at what is changing in them. In Conor's case, we saw what his confident baseline looked like. He was loud, brash, specific and domineering. And what we're seeing now is not that. From fight to fight, it's pretty clear that his confidence isn't where it used to be. But for the most accurate read of anyone's mental state, you need to see how things shift in a shorter period of time. After all, Conor could have just been tired in the most recent press conferences. So we need to see how his body language and tonality shift. In a single interaction. The only thing that we're looking for is how he changes when the topic changes. Luckily we have that. Watch in this clip how Conor speaks much more animatedly and with much more conviction when talking about defending his featherweight belt than when talking about his next fight with Nate. Watch particularly how Conor's voice speeds up, how he starts nodding, and how he hesitates much less when speaking about the featherweight division.

Make no mistake, I am the undisputed 145 pound UFC champion and that is my division. A division I have destroyed. Saturday night. Now two fighters get to fight and rise up and see where we are. But make no mistake, that 145 pound division is my division. I am the world champion at that weight and I will continue to dominate that division. I have other business that has presented itself that I must handle. First.

Did you hear how Conor's voice sped up and how his enthusiasm swelled and how he seemed to be much more specific and full of adjectives when talking about the featherweight division and how that all slowed down? How hesitation crept in and he got more vague when speaking about Nate? That is how you know that the conviction level is not the same for those two statements. Conor doesn't have the bulletproof confidence that he used to, but that doesn't mean that he won't win. Confidence and competence are not the same thing. The winner of this next fight will be determined by a lot of things outside the scope of this analysis. Whoever wins though, it's going to be very interesting to see how each fighter's confidence responds. If you personally are interested in something that you can do to boost your confidence in those moments where you need it the most, there is an exercise that takes about 60 seconds to do and can create some seriously huge results. It's something that can be very helpful when you start to feel anxious, like before a presentation, an interview, a date, wherever. So if you're curious what that is and you want something to boost your confidence in one minute, we've set up another video that you can get by clicking the box here, it's going to take you to another page where you just submit your email and you can get access to that exercise right now to get that confidence boost. If you have enjoyed this video and you want to be the first to know, whenever we post a new one, go ahead. Make sure to subscribe to this channel. That way we pop up on your YouTube home screen every single week. You won't have to worry about ever missing a new video. Just go ahead, click the button here to do that and you'll get lots more breakdowns like these. Plus the best tips that I have for being your most charismatic, confident self in the moments that count the most. And of course, if you have any video suggestions, please go ahead, write those in the comments. I have very much enjoyed doing this video on Connor. There's actually other ones that I want to do on the way that he interacts with people, because I think he is quite charismatic charismatic in that even though his confidence seems to have shifted a bit. So whoever you're rooting for, I hope that you've enjoyed this video and I look forward to seeing you in the next one.