Despite his very public persona, there are few people on this planet who can actually say that they know “The Notorious” Conor McGregor.
John Kavanagh, McGregor’s longtime mixed martial arts coach, would be included amongst those who actually know who the gregarious Irishman actually is.
Over this past weekend, a lengthy interview Kavanagh did with Paul Kimmage of Irish newspaper Independent.ie was published that saw the 41-year-old trainer open up on a number of McGregor-related topics including his most famous fighter’s thoughts on the aftermath of his fight with Khabib Nurmagomedev, the Floyd Mayweather Jr. bout and more.
Here are some of the highlights:
The Khabib incident
It’s been well documented by now that on Oct. 6 earlier this year at UFC 229, Nurmagomedov sparked a huge melee both inside and outside the octagon after leaping over the cage to attack a member of McGregor’s team shortly after Nurmagomedov had just made McGregor tap out to become the undisputed UFC lightweight champion.
In the leadup to their fight, McGregor was his usual trash-talking self that was at first seen as him doing his usual sell job for the fight. However, many of his jabs at Nurmagomedov seemed to have more of a personal edge and, as it turns out, Nurmagomedov definitely took them as personal affronts on himself and his family.
It’s a question that’s been asked many times before when it comes to McGregor, but seeing as what happened, did McGregor actually cross the line this time?
“I’ve an Icelandic fighter, Gunnar Nelson, with Conor in the UFC now, and you couldn’t get more ying and yang. Gunny won’t say two words in an interview. We joke sometimes that his expression has never changed. He’s been in the UFC longer than Conor but has nowhere near made his retirement money,” Kavanagh told Kimmage.
“I look at them and think: ‘This is night and day.’ Now imagine we went back seven or eight years and I said to Conor: ‘For [expletive] sake act like Gunny, be polite and quiet and respectful.’ He’d be looking at me today going: ‘John, I’m [expletive] broke here!’ So if we can agree that the point of professional fighting is to make money, Conor’s way of doing it is clearly the best. …
“I certainly wouldn’t stand for something racist, or anything along those lines. Some of the stuff he says is just childish. I can’t take it all that seriously.”
Kavanagh compares McGregor’s showmanship to that of Muhammad Ali, pointing out that combat sports’ most famous athlete would insult opponents in a derogatory manner at times, like McGregor did – “[Ali] certainly did some unsavoury things.”
But while Kavanagh, someone who has known McGregor for years, is able to brush aside such explosive comments, it’s much more difficult for just about everyone else. And to that point, Kavanagh acknowledges that while it’s a bad look, it’s McGregor who made his own bed.
“That’s something Conor has to live with,” said Kavanagh. “I think he knows [what people think of him]. I don’t think there’s any need for me to tell him. He’s not 12. …
“He wouldn’t be interested [in doing a sit-down where he discusses his side of things]. He doesn’t feel he has to explain. He doesn’t feel apologetic.”
The Mayweather fight
In what was surely the most profitable fight of his career, McGregor fought Mayweather in his first and only professional boxing match.
The fight’s result went the way most expected, with Mayweather winning by technical knockout, but McGregor did manage to turn some heads in that fight with his boxing ability.
By Kavanagh’s account, that shouldn’t have been much of a surprise as he truly believed McGregor had a good shot to beat Mayweather.
“He was ten years younger, he was coming off the best year of his competitive life, Mayweather hadn’t competed in a while, he had [sparred] Pauli Malignaggi and made him look ordinary and the referee, Joe Cortez, a Hall of Famer, had said it: ‘Your boy’s real.’”
And even though it didn’t go the way Kavanagh wanted to, he still believes he and McGregor delivered a good fight.
“I think, if he hadn’t prepared properly and been demolished in a round, I’d have hung my head, but he had given a good account of himself. And it brought a lot of new people to the sport, which is partly my job as well, so, no. I saw it as a spectacle and didn’t feel apologetic or [as if I] owed anyone for anything we didn’t deliver on.”
The future
‘What’s next?’ is a common question asked about McGregor these days.
With the hearing for his suspension in the wake of UFC 229 postponed for the time being, it’s not entirely sure when we’ll see him back in the octagon or, as Kavanagh alluded, if we’ll ever see him back in there.
“Will he fight again? I don’t know. I know him as a person and know that coming off two losses – even though one was boxing – will be hard for him. But he’s 30, two kids, and has a big whiskey deal that’s making him more money than fighting ever did. Would you get up in the morning to be punched in the face? I don’t think so. But he’ll probably call me tomorrow and say: ‘What did you say that for? I’m fighting in March.’ So I don’t know.”
But even if McGregor should return for a fight, there’s a chance Kavanagh might not be in his corner.
As Kimmage explains in the interview, Kavanagh considered stopping as McGregor’s trainer after the Eddie Alvarez fight at UFC 205 that saw McGregor become the first simultaneous two-division champion in UFC history. Obviously, he would go on to stay for the rest of McGregor’s fights, but now, he says he’ll need to be seriously swayed.
“He would certainly have to convince me to go again,” said Kavanagh. “I love him. I love the whole journey we’ve had but I’d need a good ‘why.’ It might be [Nate] Diaz again because he promised that fight. It might be a rematch with Khabib. But if it was just: ‘Well, they want me to fight that guy.’ I think I’d say, ‘I wish you the best.’”
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