Dominick Cruz made a very important point about Conor:
"You got to play the cards the way they are given and I wasn't given the same cards as him, so I have to use what I've been given to grow with that. You shouldn't model yourself after him, you should be yourself and just understand that you can't choose who goes viral or who becomes a superstar--that's out of our control,"
http://www.flocombat.com/article/47...onor-mcgregor-at-featherweight-or-lightweight
Conor selling that many PPVs is a product of his work or whatever. He is just lucky that his personality got viral.
It's like those YouTube videos that suddenly get millions of views or some music videos that go viral like that Korean thing Gangnam Style years ago. There is no scientific formula or any special talent behind it, you can never know for certain what will be popular and how people will react to it. Popularity is in most cases mostly due to luck and circumstances you can't control, especially this day and age with the internet and complete cretinization of society.
If you look at it objectively:
Is Conor the best MMA fighter? No. Is Conor the most exciting MMA fighter? No. Is Conor the most intelligent, the most good looking fighter or whatever? No.
So why exactly is he the biggest draw? Because of combination of lucky circumstances, being at the right place at the right time and most importantly the random unpredictable stupidity of the masses that buy these PPVs and are on his hypetrain, the vast majority of them being casual MMA fans without sufficient knowledge about the sport or aren't even MMA fans at all. It's nothing to be particularly proud of and it's shouldn't count as some sort of MMA-related achievement.
It's ridiculous how Conor fans always insult MMA or boxing legends and other decent fighters by saying they're "bums" and inferior to Conor because they don't sell as much as Conor as if Conor's "achievement" of selling a lot of PPVs outweighs the real hard work and great performances in the ring/octagon that those fighters had. And those people claim to be fans of the sport?
There is no special achievement in Conor selling that many PPVs. It's about as great of an achievement as posting a random stupid video on YouTube that somehow gets millions of views. There isn't any "hard work" behind it. It's not like Conor went in MMA working hard on some scientific plan how to sell the PPVs, he was just being the obnoxious loudmouth that he is with his accent and hipster tattoos and for whatever reason the retarded stupid public liked that.
On the other hand you have great fighters (including fighters who are better and more established than Conor) who sell around 300k PPVs or even less because for whatever reason that is beyond their control they didn't get viral. People are stupid like Mousasi said. The PPV sales are obviously not reflecting the actual abilities of a fighter so why do some people constantly bring them up here?
tldr: Conor going viral and selling PPVs is not an achievement that is product of any "hard work", it's about as much of an achievement as posting a stupid YouTube video that somehow gets millions of views. People are stupid and unpredictable and whether a fighter gets viral or not is out of his control. Some get lucky and some don't. Conor is lucky because the stupid retarded public happens to like his personality. It's has nothing to do with MMA