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At UFC 202 last Saturday, featherweight champion Conor McGregor (20-3; 8-1 UFC) emerged victorious against both Nate Diaz (19-11; 14-9 UFC) and his natural inclinations.

The Irish puncher won a majority decision over Stockton, Calif.’s Diaz in a five-round war that echoed their first meeting last March while showcasing a fundamental change in McGregor’s approach. This time around, McGregor fought smartly, adapting his techniques to a tough opponent and reining in his tendency to look for the knockout. It was a brilliant adaptation to the challenge in front of him.

When McGregor faced Diaz the first time, the American had stepped up on just 11 days’ notice to replace Brazilian lightweight champion Rafael dos Anjos. With so little time to reflect on it, Diaz’s status as an entertaining and dangerous but not necessarily top-flight fighter overshadowed just how difficult a matchup Diaz presented to the Irish superstar.

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First, Diaz is three inches taller than McGregor, carries a reach advantage, and fights long behind a snapping jab and cross. McGregor is used to being the longer fighter, and much of his game is built around that assumed advantage.

Second, while McGregor works at a quick pace, almost nobody in MMA can match the volume and workrate of Nate Diaz.

Third, Diaz can absorb a tremendous amount of damage; for a puncher like McGregor, the urge to land just one more bomb to get the opponent out of there is always present.

Finally, like McGregor, Diaz is a southpaw. Many of McGregor’s crafty tricks simply don’t apply in a southpaw-southpaw matchup, and Diaz’s lead hand — a necessity in a same-stance matchup, less important in opposite-stance fights — is unquestionably better developed.

Styles make fights, and Diaz’s style, even without a real training camp, proved to be kryptonite to McGregor’s power-punching approach. The durable American ate McGregor’s potent left hand without serious problems, exceeded his pace, and when McGregor grew tired, buzzed him with punches before finishing with a choke on the mat.

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Despite McGregor’s decision victory in their second meeting, the rematch did nothing to dispel the notion that Diaz presented a massive challenge for the Dublin native; instead, the back-and-forth nature of the fight reinforced it, which makes McGregor’s victory all the more impressive.

To beat Diaz, McGregor had to overcome two distinct challenges: first, the tactical problems of distance, Diaz’s jab, and the absence of the angles and strike selection he was comfortable with against orthodox opponents; and second, the strategic challenges of how to score points and win rounds against a durable, well-conditioned fighter without getting drawn into a quick-paced brawl that would exhaust McGregor and leave him open to the finish.

The game plan for beating Nate or his brother Nick isn’t complex: throw strikes and then move in the middle of the cage to avoid getting stuck against the fence, kick their legs to wear them down and score points, and control the pace to avoid exhaustion later in the fight.

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All of that is easier said than done, though, particularly when they seem like such inviting targets. They taunt, they slap, they don’t show any obvious ill effects from the damage they absorb, and they don’t get tired. Sticking to a disciplined approach against a Diaz brother is the equivalent of eating a boring, poorly tossed salad when there’s a fat, juicy T-bone steak sitting just out of reach. You have to lunge to reach the tasty steak, but it tastes so much better than the flavorless lettuce and bad balsamic dressing sitting right in front of you. Besides, it’s not really that far away, right?

If we’re being honest, most of us would rather have the steak, and it takes a rare fighter to overcome the urge to reach out and grab for it. Nate understands how to play with that dynamic.

In the rematch, McGregor avoided the temptation of the steak and for the most part, stuck to salad. In doing so, he showed tremendous growth, both as a tactical fighter and a strategist capable of thinking beyond the exchange or even the round to the fight as a whole. Low kicks, never a significant part of McGregor’s game in the past, became a centerpiece of his strategy. When Diaz turned it up in the third round and McGregor looked like he was done, he adjusted in the fourth round by jabbing — again, a new tool — and then circling away to buy time before going back to his power punching. Finally, McGregor’s counters were much sharper and more efficient.

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Let’s take a look at how some of these played out in the fight.

First, the low kicks. McGregor has never shown much interest in slashing his opponent’s legs with round kicks, a bread-and-butter technique for most MMA fighters who have a passing familiarity with Muay Thai or Dutch-style kickboxing. That was unfortunate for McGregor in the first fight, because meat-and-potatoes punches to low kicks are an exceptionally effective weapon against Nate Diaz.

The Stockton native’s wide stance leaves a lot of weight on the lead leg and makes it difficult to quickly sidestep to cover a step to the outside. Moreover, low kicks happen at precisely the range Nate relies on his jab to dominate.

In the first fight, McGregor essentially conceded this range to Diaz after the first two minutes of the fight, preferring instead to leap in with his left hand. That was effective in the sense that McGregor landed damaging punches, but it cost him a great deal of energy and contributed to his exhaustion in the second round. In the rematch, McGregor edged his way into that long range rather than leaping in. When Diaz looked like he was going to jab, McGregor laced him with the low kick:

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Watch the distance here. McGregor walks forward rather than throwing himself forward, and when Diaz sets his feet in the southpaw stance, McGregor immediately slams home a low kick. Diaz recovers, resets his feet, and attempts to respond with a jab, but McGregor has a potent counter left hand waiting for him.

Sequences like this played out over and over again, especially early in the fight. McGregor landed 27 low kicks in the first two rounds, causing valuable attrition that helped slow Diaz’s quick pace later in the fight.

The low kicks also allowed McGregor to be more efficient. Because he didn’t have to leap in, he could pressure Diaz more effectively and push him back toward the fence, something he struggled to do in the first fight, since the arc of the low kick cut off Diaz’s escape angles as McGregor pressed forward. It takes much less energy to fight an opponent backed to the fence than it does to move freely in the open space in the middle of the cage.

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Contrast that low kick to this sequence from the first fight:

McGregor walks into range, but Diaz’s jab owns that particular slice of distance. McGregor counters, but he’s just a bit too far away to land his left straight-right hook combination cleanly.

Let’s come back to McGregor’s counter left, because his adjustments on that punch were key to his success in the second fight. In the past, the Irishman has preferred a hop-step or backstepping counter, and he tried repeatedly to hit it in the first fight with Diaz. He struggled to find the range on this strike, though, consistently stepping himself just a bit too far backward to land cleanly. His swings and misses with this shot cost him yet more energy.

In the second fight, McGregor made a simple adjustment: He planted his feet and remained in the pocket to counter Diaz’s jab rather than stepping back out and then throwing. As with the low kicks, this allowed him to conserve energy by staying in a range where he could hit Diaz rather than one that would require him to leap in.

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Still, this is easier on paper than it is in practice, requiring excellent timing, a keen sense of the distance, and a firm knowledge of the risk that comes with standing in front of Nate Diaz.

McGregor navigated that minefield beautifully.

In this sequence, McGregor has successfully pressured Diaz back to the fence. Diaz is no fool and doesn’t want to be stuck without room to move, so he throws a jab to cover his attempt to pivot out and get away. There’s an inherent danger here, because it involves moving into McGregor’s potent left hand, and the Irishman exploits this.

McGregor feels the jab brush his face, which tells him where Diaz is relative to him, and responds with a compact left hand that drops the American to the canvas.

This sequence was of a piece with the first GIF above, the one that began with the low kick. Both involved McGregor aggressively going after Diaz and trying to push him back, something he did unsuccessfully in the first fight. These adjustments allowed him to do so much more effectively the second time around.

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In their first meeting, Diaz was able to survive the Irishman’s aggression, but he made his real hay pressuring McGregor right back. In the rematch, Diaz still had his best moments of success moving forward, like this:

McGregor had better answers this time, though. The inside-angle counter he favors against orthodox fighters isn’t there against southpaws, and his trademark backstepping counters in the first fight were less effective than usual because of his issues with range. This time, he was ready to stand his ground, plant his feet, and throw back when Nate pressured. He did so by developing a series of responses to the jab, Diaz’s bread-and-butter tool for imposing himself at range.

Diaz has gotten away from the fence and finds himself in the middle of the cage, where he usually drills jab-cross combinations at a rapid pace. He mugs a little, and then fires off a sharp jab. McGregor times it beautifully, however, slipping his head to the inside and sliding his left hand over the top of Diaz’s right. This is called a “cross counter,” and it’s a basic but extremely effective response to the jab.

McGregor follows that left with a right hook, intended to slide over the top of Diaz’s following cross, but comes up short. That wasn’t always the case, though:

Just as in the last GIF, Diaz slides forward behind his trademark jab-cross. Instead of throwing and slipping at the same time with a cross counter, this time McGregor waits for the jab, slips to the outside (as opposed to the inside), and returns fire with the left hand. It lands cleanly, and so does the right hook that follows.

As clever and effective as all of these examples are, they’re tactical responses to the individual problem of Diaz’s jab and its control of the range. What made McGregor’s performance great was his strategic response to the challenge Nate Diaz presents over a 25-minute fight.

It would have been easy, for example, for McGregor to land one of those gorgeous left-hand counters and convince himself that he could finish Diaz with a swarming combination. He nearly fell into that trap in the second round, and it cost him late in the frame and then in the third round, a borderline 10-8 for Diaz.

If McGregor had panicked and come out looking to pressure and get Diaz out of there in the fourth round, he would have burned through what little remained of his gas tank. Instead, however, he stuck and moved, drawing Diaz onto his counters and using his jab to create space and avoid Diaz’s aggression in turn.

That fourth round sealed the fight for McGregor, and it encapsulated the brilliance and depth of the approach he required to beat Diaz. The old McGregor, the one who lost to Diaz in March, couldn’t have pulled that off; he owned neither the tools — jabs, low kicks, and a diverse array of counters to Diaz’s jab — nor had he ever been forced to demonstrate the discipline necessary to stick to his game plan, resisting the siren song of the quick-paced but technical brawl he prefers.

Truly outstanding fighters can overcome the worse angels of their nature when the structure of the matchup demands it. McGregor may not have the resume of an all-time great like Georges St-Pierre, Anderson Silva, or Jose Aldo, whom he defeated last December, but he has shown the adaptability and intelligence that are prerequisites for admission into those ranks.

Patrick Wyman is a mixed martial arts scout who’s earned his PhD. He hosts the Heavy Hands Podcast and contributes analysis to The Post.

McGregor’s mind put him back on top. What’s next is his call.

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