Did Conor McGregor and Khabib Nurmagomedov accomplish their respective goals at Thursday’s UFC 229 press conference? And is the UFC playing it safe with promotional events out of a fear of potential chaos? Retired UFC and WEC fighter Danny Downes joins MMAjunkie columnist Ben Fowlkes to discuss in this week’s Trading Shots.

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Fowlkes: Hey Danny, have I told you about this amazing whiskey commercial I saw recently? It was really long, for one thing, but so compelling that I couldn’t take my eyes off it.

See, it started with this manic Irishman pulling out bottles of various sizes and then pouring the sweet, sweet brown stuff into a series of plastic cups. Where it got weird is, he tried to offer one to a very serious bearded gentleman, who was apparently celebrating a birthday. But then – get this, Danny – the guy refused to accept it. So the other guy just yelled at him about the history of Chechnya and Dagestan for a while. Unorthodox, right?

Still, I find myself with hankering for whiskey after all that. But then, I usually have a hankering for whiskey, so maybe that’s nothing new.

What do you think, did these fellas Conor McGregor and Khabib Nurmagomedov convince you to buy anything with their very different approaches to marketing? Or did they just weird you out?

Downes: If you needed a press conference to learn that McGregor is drunk off his own power and money (and maybe whiskey) while Nurmagomedov is a stoic, humorless man, you haven’t been paying attention.

While McGregor’s extended Proper No. Twelve infomercial didn’t make me more likely to watch UFC 229 (because I was always going to watch it), I suppose it did serve to accentuate how different the two men are.

Dressed in a magenta suit, McGregor was out there working the room even if no fans were allowed to attend. He boastfully drank his whiskey and even threw in some geo-political trash talk in there for those paying attention.

Plus, he insulted Nurmagomedov’s manager, Ali Abdelaziz, which is always an easy way to get hardcore fans on your side. If you were expecting humility and repentance after his bus attack, none was found.

Dressed like he decided to run out and grab some groceries (you, too, can dress like Khabib), Nurmagomedov sat there and deadpanned responses like, “I will smash this guy,” and later complained that he didn’t care for McGregor’s cursing. Let’s not forget this is the same guy who was outraged people in Dagestan had the gall to attend a rap concert.

Perhaps our nostalgia for Ivan Drago blinds us, but Pat Robertson would be more fun to hang around than this guy.

Like I said earlier, the MMA wildmen and women are not the target audience here. UFC 229 won’t get to the supposed 2.5 million buys Dana White claims it’s trending towards without a whole lot of casual interest.

So far, though, it seems that the UFC is banking on Conor McGregor’s star power to carry the load. All the while, they don’t want him to get too crazy.

The lack of a real media tour, banning fans from the press conference, these are all moves designed to keep McGregor from going off the deep end. Is that the way to sell this fight, though? Don’t you need the chaos to make headlines? “Really interesting style matchup” isn’t the way to break pay-per-view records.

Fowlkes: Let’s say I accept your premise that the main goal here is to prevent the pre-fight theater from turning into a catastrophe that might ruin everything. In that case, doesn’t it seem odd that the single best piece of hype material comes from just such a catastrophe, which in fact only hastened this fight rather than derailing it?

I understand that maybe you don’t want to continue to rely on the criminal justice system’s lenience toward rich people. And maybe there’s even a point where the UFC would actually feel compelled to do something other than talk tough but take zero action. But the fight’s in two weeks, and the UFC seems to be coasting here, relying on McGregor to provide all the momentum.

And, to his credit, he probably can. He was basically up there on an empty stage in New York, and still he turned it into something. He did so in part by inflaming some dangerous regional tensions, but that just seems like typical McGregor stuff, probing every possible avenue in search of something that will get his opponent worked up.

Did any of it go too far, in your eyes? I saw people calling foul when McGregor took aim at Nurmagomedov’s father, or when he kept trying to shove his whiskey in the face of a devout Muslim who doesn’t drink. I can’t say any of it struck me as worse than the hand truck incident, but is all really fair in love and fight promotion?

Downes: I don’t think any of it went too far. Would people care if McGregor was trying to hand Sage Northcutt a copy of Hustler? Probably, because people can become outraged at anything when they want to, but I would assume the majority would not care.

McGregor knows how to get under people’s skin. He knows that simply saying he’ll kick Nurmagomedov’s butt isn’t going to work. Instead, he wants his opponent to be disgusted with him. Nurmagomedov takes himself very seriously and finds it distasteful that someone as boorish as McGregor is given fame and fortune.

I would concede, though, that part of the reason I give McGregor a pass is because he’s so good at it. We know he’s a showman and promoter first and foremost. Everything he does has a bit of a wink and a nod to it. We should still call him to task when he crosses the line (e.g. the racist undertones of his Floyd Mayweather trash talk), but he does seem to have a longer leash than most.

Part of the reason why Colby Covington gets called out more is because he’s not that good at it. Watching him stumble over his rehearsed lines is like watching a grade school production of “Guys and Dolls.”

Provided he doesn’t get high on his own supply too much beforehand, McGregor delivers masterful performances. I don’t know if he’ll deliver one inside the octagon on October 6, but I know I can’t wait to see what happens.

Ben Fowlkes is MMAjunkie and USA TODAY’s MMA columnist. Danny Downes, a retired UFC and WEC fighter, is an MMAjunkie contributor who has also written for UFC.com and UFC 360. Follow them on twitter at @benfowlkesMMA and @dannyboydownes.