Holly Holm, like the rest of us, waited with bated breath.
The new first lady of fighting found on Friday afternoon that one of her early rewards for shattering the Ultimate Fighting Championships earth and downing Ronda Rousey was to stand front and centre and be questioned by a long line of Irishmen in various states of sobriety. Some of the quizzing thrown the new world bantamweight champion's way hugged the tramlines of decency and coherency.
It was a Q&A arranged to keep fight fans busy while they filled the MGM Grand Garden Arena ahead of weigh-ins for the following night's spectacle at the same house. It was being filled early and often by Tricolour-clad footsoldiers of the Notorious one. The trickle of Conor McGregor fans had become a torrent here on Friday.
And so, in between the odd pertinent query, Holm was asked whether she would prefer a Tinder date or an arm wrestle, what was the freakiest thing she'd ever got up to and more than once invited to come along on the 12 Pubs of Vegas.
Forty minutes in, the risk of each next question being outright offensive seemed pretty damn high. But then something wholly unexpected happened. A Irishman trans-Atlantic arrival in the blue t-shirt, flag tied around his neck, opened his mouth...and, well, crooned.
"You're just too good to be true," he began as Holm beamed on stage. "I can't take my eyes off you."
It probably wasn't his intention, but just with those two lines, the singer provided a perfect summation for the relationship Ireland seems to have with its most polarising modern sportsman. Conor McGregor doesn't find a whole lot of middle ground, it's very much a love-hate relationship.
Those who love him, the 9000 who eventually filled the arena to watch the Dubliner climb aboard the scales and the thousands more who will fill the place to capacity again tonight, can't take their eyes off him. Those who hate him think that the whole thing is just too good to be true.
Tonight in Las Vegas, those divergent camps are likely to get their best answer yet as to where the truth really lies. In this city of make believe for adults, things are about to get very, very real.
On the opposite side of the octagon, Jose Aldo Junior will enter. After 14 months in which these two gifted featherweight prizefighters were fed to the world at every opportunity, the cage door will close and even referee Big John McCarthy will drift into the background. McGregor and Aldo will finally have themselves to themselves. And the rest of us? The rest of us will have a fight on our hands.
For this observer at least, there was an added irony in the choice of tribute song for Holm. In this all too new age setting, it was an old time classic. Swinging sixties meets the age of the selfie stick. Frankie Valli is probably unlikely to have intended as much when he penned the ditty, but it provided a pretty apt for what comes together in the octagon tonight.
The unification of outright and interim champion is a meeting of recent but oh so fierce rivals. It also shapes as a generational showdown. McGregor, the most perfect poster boy the UFC could ever have dreamt, against Aldo, the perennial champion who they're barely on speaking terms with.
Aldo defends a Brazilian jiu-jitsu tradition that stretches back to the first days of the 1900s. McGregor invented Irish MMA in 2013. We know he didn't, of course he didn't. But it can sometimes seem that way. The point is that while just two years separate the fighters, they appear brought together from different eras.
That, as much as all of the hype and the sales pitches, the trash talk and the sneering staredowns, is what makes this fight arguably the most fascinating in the history of this rapidly expanding sport. That is why records and precedent will tumble in this contrasting duo's wake. McGregor sells himself as the future, paints Aldo as the past.
"This one will be a spectacle. It will be the changing of the guard. It will be me bringing in a new era," he said earlier this week. "I am a man with something to prove. A man with something to prove is dangerous. I will be looking to make the world a different place."
The featherweight world has been the same place for a decade now - one where good and more usually great fighters take on Aldo and Aldo wins. As if to emphasise that different times would soon be upon us though, McGregor was a changed man this week. Out with the manic, in with the mellow. His cool confidence rubbed off on his followers.
Yet when the headline men of UFC194 were brought together on the stage one final time on Friday to weigh in, seasoned McGregor observers who had sounded only positive noises all week whispered concerns over the dramatic effects of what he says will be his final featherweight weight cut on his appearance. The hope is that while his disciples were busy drinking the desert dry overnight, McGregor was getting his fluids in at an equally rapid rate.
As he took those first sips after stepping off the scales, McGregor was serenaded to the rafters. A quick question about his opponent elicited these first four words in response: "I'm sick of talking." After 14 interminable months, that's understandable.
Less talk then, more action. There could be plenty of that in Sin City. These are two men supremely gifted in the sport of combat. Movement, management, cutting off space, all of it will be pivotal. Because both possess equally lethal weapons - Aldo's killer leg kicks meeting McGregor's levelling left fist.
"When I land a kick, he'll regret everything he's said," the man from Manaus predicted.
But McGregor insists Aldo's eighth UFC title defence won't even get going. "I feel within four minutes with the shots that I'm landing, it's all on him," he said. "I see him crumbling. It will be wrapped up inside one."
Does that sound too good to be true? We're about to find out. Don't take your eyes off it.
