‘He’s a dead body that's getting took out on a stretcher’: Conor McGregor vows to ‘slaughter’ Dustin Poirier at UFC 264

If fans thought Conor McGregor was a little too friendly ahead of his last fight with Dustin Poirier earlier this year, that doesn't seem to be the case this time around as he pledges to 'kill' his rival in the UFC 264 main event.

McGregor and Poirier will take to the cage with one another for a third time this weekend in a fight being billed as 'make or break' for the Irishman after his boxing-heavy approach to the January fight was easily dismissed by Poirier, who found success in pounding shuddering calf kicks to stifle McGregor before knocking him out in the second round.

Before – and even after – that fight, McGregor was unusually accommodating to his longtime rival. Gone were the pre-fight histrionics and insults, replaced instead with a new, respectful McGregor who credited Poirier for creating his own brand of hot sauce and for his work with  the 'Good Fight Foundation', the charitable fund Poirier oversees to help troubled youths in his home community.

Not so this time.

With the sting of defeat very much still being felt in Team McGregor, it seems that the Dubliner has reverted to type – and any tacit pre-fight ceasefire which may have existed last time round is very much absent today.

"Every shot I have thrown in this camp is a kill shot, so that’s it. I’m going to kill this man," McGregor told The Mac Life.

"Just a slaughter and a play with a scared little boy. He’s fighting scared like he always does, like they always do against me, so now I’m going to play with the little boy, play with me food, and then just devour it.

"He’s a corpse; a dead body, a blank face that’s going to get his ass whooped and taken out on a stretcher."

McGregor appeared strangely out of sorts in January's first rematch between the two lightweight standouts. Gone was the in-and-out fleet of foot which had helped McGregor rise from the regional European scene to becoming the UFC's first simultaneous two division champion – and as McGregor explains, this was a symptom of him having one eye on mixed martial arts and another on boxing.

"[We] just focused on mixed martial arts, first of all," McGregor said. "It was an 85 percent camp for boxing [before UFC 257], for Manny Pacquiao – that’s how the fight came about.

"It was going to be a charity event, not even under the UFC banner. It was just because he was a southpaw and I felt a bit of pity for him and whatnot, so I’d help him out.

"And that’s it. It went the way it went and I got a setback in there, but setbacks are a beautiful thing. Defeat is the secret ingredient to success, I say, and it’s put me right where I need to be."

There's a saying often heard in McGregor's gym: win or learn. It is a maxim which he has proved true in the past when he ironed out the deficiencies in his first loss to Nate Diaz several years ago to win the rematch months later.

Having "learned" in his pair of recent defeats to Poirier and Khabib Nurmagomedov, the time has come for him to "win" once again – and one suspects that if he doesn't do so this weekend, we might be witnessing one of MMA's brightest stars burning out.