It's going to be bad, Dustin is going to force Conor to make some tough decisions. Do you tap to strikes before it gets too bad, or do you say fuck it and take a bad KO loss, or do you shoot after saying the first one to shoot is a dusty bitch?
I think Conor is going to go out there and give his best, he will hold his own for about 8 minutes or so. But Dustin is just better all around, it wasn't just the leg kicks.
This fight will end how Dustin wants it to end, he can be merciful and choke Conor out when he shoots, or he can really make this ugly and get some revenge.
The only chance Conor has is to play possum, force Dustin to come forward and expose his chin, then maybe he can land a one punch counter KO. Use Dustin's confidence against him, but literally the instant Dustin rocks him, takes him down, lands a brutal low kick, makes him miss, aggressively clinches him, or just gets out of the first round, etc. The fight is effectively over, Conor will have to be perfect and it's not realistic.
I fully expect Conor to land his own calf kicks in this fight, but all of that will only serve to gas him out a bit quicker, he still has to fight 25mins and Dustin knows it. There's just no real way Conor can win outside of a hit behind the ear or an in fight injury. Either he goes all out round 1 and leaves himself open to counters(which can end in disaster), or he takes the Diaz 2 approach and holds his ground with leg kicks and counters(for what? 2-3 rounds max?). Scenario 1 he has a 5 minutes to finish Dustin, then he's toast. Scenario 2 is useless if he can't actually follow through with the gameplan, yea maybe you win 2 rounds, but now you have zero chance of finishing dustin and he's coming for your head the last 3 rounds.
If this was 3 rounds Conor could pull it off, but because he wants PPV points and has to fight 5 he's screwed. Should take a co-main spot and do a 3 rounder, find a champion to headline. Hell you could argue that should've been the way the original fight was structured. His star power will work against him and he'll have 10 minutes to win, when has Conor even showed the ability to move forward and finish someone with one or two shots? Let alone in the modern LW division? Conor needs to hold his ground and pull a Romero, force Dustin to abandon his gameplan and make a mistake.
If he starts the fight trying to pressure and land a KO shot, it'll be a very sad night for him because that's exactly what Dustin planned for last fight, and is currently planning for this fight. Been waiting to get better odds on Dustin, the embedded episodes should swing money toward Conor. We didn't even see the best version of Dustin in the second fight, that's the most terrifying part for Conor and his team.