Conor McGregor’s coach John Kavanagh has revealed what REALLY happened between the MMA fighter and the UFC.
Earlier this year, the Crumlin native announced that he was retiring after falling out with UFC bosses – Conor has since made up with the organisation after they pulled him from the UFC 200 card, but now Conor’s coach has revealed what actually went down.
When asked if Conor’s retirement announcement was a ploy, John totally disagreed, “No, that was genuine. In the lead up to the last fight it was kind of a rushed event, and we kinda got dragged from different media.”
“We wanted to do something different for this one, we really wanted to focus on the training and not the circus side of things and they were having none of it,” he said on 2FM’s Breakfast Republic.
“They wanted us to do a hell of a lot of travel in the lead up to the fight and it was like ‘what do you want? Do you want a professional athlete or a dancing monkey boy?'”
“So it just didn’t work out the last time, but for this one now we’ve been able to negotiate a much more doable publicity tour.
“I think the fight’s already sold, I think there’s enough intrigue in it and people are interested to see how it goes the second time so yeah, we’re much more confident,” he explained.
Speaking about the speculation surrounding whether Conor McGregor and boxing champ Floyd Mayweather will ever fight, John thinks it could very well happen.
Sparring at SBG under Coach Kavanagh! #WinOrLearn
A photo posted by Conor McGregor Official (@thenotoriousmma) on
“That could still happen, that could still happen. It’s obviously off the cards now because we have this contest in August, but at the end of the day, I think for Floyd 49 is not a nice number, 50 and over would be much more palpable.
“But who knows what could happen, let’s just get this fight out of the way, and it the numbers are right and the interest is there, that could happen,” he said.
John, who is the head coach of Straight Blast Gym Ireland, also admitted that he would love to coach Conor for a possible Floyd Mayweather bout.
“Yeah, that would be a massive honour, we have a good connection with some of the boxing gyms here anyway, you know Conor’s obviously originally from Crumlin boxing gym and Steve Collins is in and out of my gym all the time.
“His brother Paschal Collins runs a fantastic pro boxing gym that Conor trains at so we have the connection there and the Irish do quite well at boxing too.”
Speaking about working with Conor for over 10 years, John had nothing but good things to say about the MMA champion.
“He did stand out because he was this vibrant, charismatic character, and right away he was easy to get on with and we had a good report straight away.
“We’re kind of polar opposites, but opposites attract so we get on,” he added.
