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Conor McGregor's coach, John Kavanagh, believes that the defeat to Khabib Nurmagomedov at UFC 229 served to get The Notorious One back on track.
Coach Kavanagh has been with Conor McGregor through all the good and bad moments of his career. The founder and head coach of Straight Blast Gym, where Conor McGregor has trained since he started training MMA as a professional, is a Brazilian jiu-jitsu master and the first important MMA name to appear in Ireland.
In a lengthy and detailed interview with BT Sport talking about some of the backstage information on Conor McGregor's UFC path, coach Kavanagh shared some thoughts concerning his most prominent student.
Asked if he believed that The Notorious One could retire after losing to Khabib, coach Kavanagh started by analyzing all of Conor McGregor's career downfalls and how he has learned how to manage and deal with being defeated.
"I might have had that thought if I hadn't seen how he reacted to the [Nate] Diaz one. [Against Khabib] it wasn't his first time losing. He's got a couple of losses on his career, and early on, when he lost, he disappeared. He put his head down, and he just avoided everybody and ran away and hid from us. Then you look at how he evolved as an athlete and matured as a man, and with the Diaz loss, he put a suit on. He stood tall. He stood in front of you guys, and he talked about where he was, what he was going to do, and how he would improve. And sure enough, he came back and did that," said coach Kavanagh. (H/T Sportskeeda for quotes.)
He then explained how he thinks that the loss to Khabib might have helped Conor McGregor after all. At that moment, Coach Kavanagh revealed that the Conor McGregor was starting to lose focus and slip away from the righteous way.
"There's a small side of me that knew that that loss was going to change him in a positive way. That maybe a win there, and I would have lost him altogether because he was already kind of losing focus somewhat on the type of training he would normally do. And if he went in and beat him [Khabib] with that type of mindset, he might have believed he's an absolute superhero that doesn't need to put the kind of sacrifice and hard training in that he has done since. He has done for [Donald] Cerrone; he has done now for Dustin [Poirier]," declared coach Kavanagh. "So, you know, with all of these things in life that we all go through, if where you are right now is a good place, then can we really call anything in the past bad? Because we don't know what those moments did, what way they bumped us under certain pathways. And I look at Conor now, and he seems to be so happy in himself and very relaxed and loving his time with his family. Who the hell knows where he would have been if different areas in his life have went different ways? So, I look back at that moment now in a positive way." said John Kavanagh.
John Kavanagh admits he got caught in the 'Conor McGregor mania'
Conor McGregor became the most famous name in UFC after defeating Jose Aldo in only 13 seconds to capture the Featherweight title. Many thought that the Irishman was unbeatable, coach John Kavanagh included.
The coach now admits that he should not have let himself get absorbed by the excellent momentum. Kavanagh believes that being overconfident in Conor McGregor's abilities was one of the causes for his defeat against Nate Diaz.
"You know, at that stage, I've got to be honest and say [that] I was a bit caught up in the mania of it all. I just thought this man [Conor McGregor] walks on water," revealed coach Kavanagh. "And there's a part of you that acknowledges that Nate [Diaz] is not easy to put away. We got to be ready for a long, tough fight. But then the other part of you is... You just look at this guy that seems to just drop everybody with a blink of his eye. And Nate comes forward so much that there's going to be a lot of opportunities; he'll walk into that left hand. We will wash our hands we'll be back out again, back to 'Uncle Frank' in the changing rooms and a 21-year-old whiskey. And then that was not the case." said Kavanagh.
