Kavanagh in hoverboard fall
Kavanagh tries out his brother’s Hoverboard in Dublin, Ireland, but gets a little too confident with his skills and falls backward off the board.
Kavanagh: ‘We’re looking forward to shocking the world’
In an article for The42, Coach Kavanagh gives his thoughts on the McGregor-Mayweather fight.
On one of my first trips to Las Vegas with Conor McGregor, probably back in 2014, I recall him mentioning the possibility of a fight against Floyd Mayweather. I stopped doubting him a long time ago at this stage, but I remember at the time laughing it off as nothing more than a novel idea that could never possibly become a reality. Now here we are and it’s just over nine weeks away…We’re in the midst of three good weeks of training here in Ireland, before departing for Las Vegas in mid-July. I believe there will be quite a large media world tour squeezed in there as well.
He talks about the mural:
I wanted to put something suitable on the wall because Conor is a big believer in visualisation and manifesting what you can conceive into reality. That’s the shot we believe will win the fight for Conor and it’s now there for us to see whenever we train.
On strategy:
Mayweather has been in the boxing world for his entire career and everyone he’s faced has moved in a certain way that he’s pre-conditioned to handle. Now he’s going up against a guy who doesn’t follow any set patterns, who can deploy a variety of different styles of fighting and is not one bit intimidated. Conor is — as we all are here — 100% confident in victory. That kind of person is very difficult to deal with…We’re not going over to Las Vegas to make up the numbers on 26 August. When this contest takes place, we’ll be 100% ready — physically and mentally — and nothing other than victory will be acceptable. We’re looking forward to shocking the world — again.
Street fight breaks out during Kavanagh interview in Australia
Kavanagh is on the street speaking to Parr (an Australian kickboxing champion) when a scuffle breaks out near them. Kavanagh offers to coach one of the people involved.
I’ll coach him, and you get the other guy.
Kavanagh accepts Coach of Year award, falls off hoverboard
Kavanagh thanks The MMA Hour and Helwani for awarding him the Coach of the Year in a Twitter video that goes awry at the end, as he falls off a Hoverboard.
Thank you so much for this great honour. I know the competition was tough after such a big year in MMA. I want you to know that winning these awards hasn’t changed anything for us — we’re still just a small humble team from Ireland.
The ending wasn't quite as smooth… #TheMMAHour awards pic.twitter.com/zb5DKIcsgP
— Coach JK (@John_Kavanagh) January 2, 2017
Kavanagh wants Alvarez fight next
Kavanagh writes an article for The 42, where he talks about UFC 200 and what he would like McGregor to do next.
A lot of Conor’s fights have been short and relatively straightforward — which is great, because those wins are also to be enjoyed — but to see him go 25 minutes and face adversity, especially when so many people expected him to lose, it doesn’t get much better than that when you face those odds and come out with a victory…Where do we go from here? Well, we’re taking a short while to enjoy this victory, first of all, because it’s something we invested a lot in…I think it’s important to enjoy each victory, at least to a certain extent. Conor was actually back doing cardio work less than 48 hours after last weekend’s fight, so the training has continued…From a personal point of view, my own preference would be a lightweight title bout against reigning champion Eddie Alvarez next. Conor can make 145lbs to defend his featherweight belt, absolutely, but I just think 155lbs suits him best. Ultimately that’s Conor’s decision, not mine…If and when that fight is announced, I would be leaning towards a second-round knockout in Conor’s favour.
Kavanagh also says he welcomes the idea of a fight at Croke Park, in Dublin, and that non-US fights should be scheduled for Irish local time.
Details McGregor training
In an article for The 42, Kavanagh details his approach to McGregor’s training.
We’ve been following that pattern now for what feels like a long time — about 19 weeks in total come fight night. Although it seems like it has been a long process, we’re definitely seeing the fruits of our labour. There are certain fitness tests that we have numbers on, and the improvements from when Conor began to where he is now have been dramatic. There’s no comparing this training camp to any we have done previously. I can’t stress enough how different this has been. As many of you will probably already know, routine hasn’t been something you would have associated with Conor’s preparations in the past. But this has been like nothing we’ve done before and it’s going to be a massive help for his next number of fights, not just this one…We’re learning about this art as we go along…I strongly believe that will manifest itself in Las Vegas in 12 days’ time…I’ve often spoken of how drastically Conor improves with each training camp, and while there’s certainly no denying that he gets better for every fight, this has undoubtedly been his biggest leap forward yet…Patience will be essential for Conor in this fight. I’m veering towards a fourth-round finish in his favour, following an opening three rounds which I expect him to dominate in the same manner he did in the first frame of the previous fight.