John Kavanagh brushes off concerns over Conor McGregor’s inactivity in the last two years.
Time flies in combat sports, and it’s difficult to believe that it’s been almost two years since Conor McGregor last set foot in the Octagon.
McGregor did, of course, duke it out with Floyd Mayweather Jr. in the boxing ring last August, but that’s the last time we saw the Irishman against an actual opponent.
Given McGregor’s recent inactivity, fans are concerned ‘The Notorious’ will suffer from ring rust come fight night on Oct. 6, when he is scheduled to lock horns with the undefeated Khabib Nurmagomedov at UFC 229.
According to longtime coach John Kavanagh, however, ring rust shouldn’t be a problem because of how McGregor has trained in preparation for UFC 229.
The SBG Ireland head coach says his prized student has been through ‘a lot of very intense training sessions’ to help mimic the real fight at Las Vegas’ T-Mobile Arena.
“I think it’s how you approach training,” Kavanagh said in a recent interview with The Mac Life. “I think if your gym environment and how you train in the gym is very separate to how you compete then for sure there will be ring rust but if you are regularly putting yourself in stressful sparring situations, which is the best we can get in the gym environment, it more resembles competition then.
“So, specifically very much for this training camp we had a lot of very intense training sessions, sparring sessions, it’s done in the environment he’s going to compete in. We even had spectators for a lot of the spars, so we’re trying to make the training environment as closely mimic the competition environment so there isn’t that much of a disconnect between the two of them.”
Speaking of McGregor’s opponent, Nurmagomedov, Kavanagh is looking forward to seeing how the Dagestani reacts when under pressure. ‘The Eagle’ has never lost a single round in his UFC career.
“It is interesting fighting an unbeaten fighter,” Kavanagh said. “I’ve had a lot of my guys that went a long time unbeaten and then they have the loss. It’s always interesting to see, in that fight where they had their first loss, when things start to go wrong. It’s an unusual feeling for them and sometimes they struggle to deal with that.
“I don’t think Khabib has lost a single round in his UFC career. If you do lose a round are you going to be able to come back out with that same level of confidence in the next round? There’s a lot of interesting things to be played out in this fight.”
UFC 229: Khabib vs. McGregor takes place next month, October 6 at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas.