Newly crowned 145-pound UFC featherweight champion Conor McGregor—who needed just 13 seconds and one well-connected left to claim the belt from José Aldo—is obsessed with the way his body moves, the way it attacks and defends, the way it inflicts and absorbs harm.

AGE: 27WEIGHT: 145 LBs.

You ask: What’s it like getting punched in the face?

“It’s a warm sensation,” he replies. “It’s nice. It almost makes me feel invincible.”

A world-class shit-talker when the cameras are on, he speaks quietly now. It’s a Friday night and we’re at a public UFC gym in Torrance, California, tucked into a nondescript strip mall next to Party City and Trader Joe’s. McGregor likes to train in the middle of the night.

And training, for him, does not necessarily mean that he’s sparring or hitting a heavy-bag, doing what might be expected of a man who knocks humans unconscious for a living. Tonight, wearing a skintight, neon-green pullover and black spandex, McGregor is doing what more closely resembles interpretive dance.

Under the watchful eye of his movement coach Ido Portal, McGregor and a half-dozen other fighters go through a variety of concentrated movements: quick steps and shuffles, somersaults, cartwheels. The seven men will do this for nearly an hour, squirreled away on a large red mat in the back of the gym, the atmosphere heavy with hot sweat, under a wall with faux-graffiti that says, “Train different.” McGregor has. For balance he does dead lifts one-legged. For footwork he studies capoeira, a Brazilian martial art that’s essentially kickboxing while dancing. And now the once no-name plumbing apprentice from Dublin is a 27-year-old fighting sensation they call “The Notorious,” with the fists, mouth, and look of a ready-made UFC marketing machine.

His hair is close-cropped on top—not much longer than the beard covering his face—and shaved on the sides. His left side is mangled with cauliflower ear, a mark of experience. His eyes are brown but deep enough to seem black. He has turned himself into a living, breathing weapon, with a body that is not large but taut with muscle, nimble as a cat and packed tight with concussive force. Adding to his body’s lurking ferocity—a physical sense of something explosive hiding just under his skin—are his tattoos: the words “McGregor” and “Notorious” on the top and bottom of his stomach; a Tiger’s head on the abs in between; and, on his chest, front and center: a massive drawing of a gorilla wearing a crown and eating a bloody heart.

“I like the way the needle feels,” he says, his words swimming in a thick Irish brogue as he explains his affinity for ink. “It’s relaxing.”

But perhaps that heart-devouring gorilla goes deeper, testifies to something more. Watch McGregor crawl around and you’ll see something beast-like about him, betraying his primal fascination with wild animals who must rely on their powerful bodies to hunt, to survive.

“They are themselves,” he says. “They’re free. They move. They kill. They eat.”

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Clay Skipper is a Staff Writer at GQ.XInstagramRelated Stories for GQConor McGregorUFC