The fight game suffers from a similar paradox as politics. Just as winning elections and actually governing are two separate, possibly completely unrelated skill sets, so it is that the things that sell tickets to a fight aren’t the same things that make that fight great.

And this Saturday’s UFC main event between Conor McGregor and Dustin Poirier was great. It was notable not only for being a great fight, but for its decided lack of all the things a Conor McGregor fight usually sells. There was no big grudge match build up, no lengthy sizzle reels of the two guys trashing each other (or blurry TMZ videos of them throwing dollies through bus windows or whatever), and a notable dearth of politics, religion, xenophobia, water bottle chucking, and whatever else normally accompanies the Conor McGregor circus. McGregor and Poirier even genteelly touched gloves before the fight, before the ref even old them to.