Conor McGregor explains why an Irish bank ended his short-lived affair with an Opel Astra

Everyone remembers their first car.

In any man or woman's life, it's a seminal moment of adulthood. Especially if you have had to take care of your finances to come up with the dough to purchase it, then you will tend to mind it like one of your very own offspring. But if you're Conor McGregor ... well his dreams of car ownership, as a youngster, didn't last long at all. Ahead of Saturday's UFC 194  showdown with Jose Aldo in Las Vegas, the Wall Street Journal have produced a fantastic profile of the 27-year-old who has ripped up the rule book on how a MMA fighter is supposed to act. Recently we've seen him show off his outrageous car collection that ranges from Ranger Rovers to BMWs, but according to the featherweight, his first set of wheels was a long way from the glamour of those car showrooms.

"An Opel Astra. I was an apprentice plumber, and I went into a car place with, like, ten cents in my pocket. I was on nothin’ a week, workin’ my bollocks off. But I went in and they said, ‘We’ll give you this brand-spanking new car if you sign this sheet. And all you gotta do is pay this amount every month.’ And I was like, ‘Sure! No problem!’ Signed the sheet, drove out in the car…never paid a once. They came and got it and took it back and that was that!”

We'd love to know who got the car after the Dubliner and if it has a few stories to tell. The piece also includes a typical piece of bravado from the UFC star, who compares himself to talented, but sadly doomed artist, Vincent van Gogh. McGregor feels his current drive and determination is very closely linked to what the famous post-impressionist artist went through in his own life,

"I’m so lost in it that I can’t imagine anything else. Like Vincent Van Gogh. He lost his mind in his game. I have lost my mind also. But I am happy with that. I feel to reach the high pinnacle in anything you do, you must almost become insane to what you are doing.”