Conor McGregor was sitting and leaning against the cage, chest heaving. His face was bruised, blood streaming from his left ear. He was a beaten man.
"Doctor's stoppage! Doctor's stoppage!" he yelled toward the center of the cage, trying to make a face-saving insistence that the cageside doctor had ended the main event of UFC 264, not Dustin Poirier. And while it's true that referee Herb Dean had waved off the bout at the end of Round 1 because McGregor had suffered an injury to his left leg in the final moments before the horn, this would be one time when the starry Irishman would not control the narrative.