If it were up to him, John Kavanagh would have Conor McGregor take a third fight against Nate Diaz next.
SBG Dublin head coach John Kavanagh foresees a fight against Khabib Nurmagomedov to be finalized next for Conor McGregor. However, he also has other ideas in mind.
Speaking to analyst Robin Black on Friday, Kavanagh actually wants his fighter to have a third fight against Nate Diaz.
“Nate Diaz is my favourite fight, by the way,” Kavanagh said (via MMANYTT). “If I could pick a fight for the next one it would be that trilogy. I realise it’s not the fan-favorite.”
“The fan favorite without a close second is the Khabib fight, but for me, it’s the Nate Diaz rematch and I think the Khabib fight is a lot more straightforward.”
Diaz was able to deal McGregor his first UFC loss at UFC 196 in March 2016, but McGregor was able to even the score at UFC 202 five months later with a majority decision verdict. For Kavanagh, getting that win over Diaz is actually more exciting than winning a belt.
“For me, he had already lost to him, it’s a bigger guy. Conor’s skill set is shutting people’s consciousness off and he’s impossible – a freaking Homer Simpson head, he just keeps moving forward,” Kavanagh said of Diaz.
“Conor’s bravery in it [the fight], I’ve seen Conor fight a lot of people that he’s able to walk through and that’s great, it’s fun and you raise a belt, but it doesn’t it doesn’t really excite me that much, not really,” he added.
“But that fight, if you’d been around him, by the time he’d got backstage [after losing the first Diaz fight], we were watching that night, and then the next morning he was not off the phone until Lorenzo and Dana said that would be his next fight.”
McGregor has not stepped inside the UFC Octagon since UFC 205 in November 2016, with his return still in limbo as he deals with his charges stemming from his UFC 223 bus attack. Diaz, on the other hand, has been out of action for almost two years now and seemingly has no plans of making a return any time soon.