Conor McGregor’s coach says he feels like they’re almost cheating at UFC 202
Conor McGregor goes into Saturday’s UFC 202 main event rematch against Nate Diaz in amust-win situation. McGregor suffered his UFC loss to Diaz by second-round submission at UFC 196 in March. He has been focused on righting a wrong and has spared no expense for this fight. The featherweight champion has stated he spent over $300,000 in preparation for the fight.
The man who gets to implement the gameplan heading into Saturday’s showdown, SBG’s and McGregor’s head trainer John Kavanagh admits this whole training camp was something new even for him and it had the feel they did something illegal.
“Anyone who knows about the history of [Kavanagh’s mixed martial arts gym] SBG Ireland will be aware that we were always regarded as the last-minute gym — the guys who would be ready to step in at short notice,” Kavanagh wrote in his blog, The 42 via Talksport. “All you can do in those circumstances is try to get your skill set to such a high level that the opponent doesn’t matter.
“I believe that worked well for us and the results were proof of that, but I also feel that when you’ve done that for so long, you can end up getting caught out against certain styles of opponent. This has provided us with an opportunity to experience the other method of extreme game planning and being very opponent-orientated.
“It’s been a new approach for me, and for us all. I’d describe it as doing an exam after seeing the questions on the teacher’s test sheet. I feel like we’re almost cheating going into this fight because we know what questions we’re going to face in the test”.
Will all the money spent and new training camp approaches work for the “Notorious” one? Tune into UFC 202 this Saturday with the main card starting on pay-per-view at 10 p.m. ET to find out if Kavanagh’s statement proves to be correct.
