Kavanagh: Mayweather is a ‘dirtbag’
At an event at the Star Casino in Sydney, Australia, Kavanagh says that while he respects Mayweather as a fighter, he has none for him as a person.
I do think Floyd Mayweather is pretty much a dirtbag. He’s beat up his girlfriends…He just strikes me as a real bullying type character. He makes these guys fight endless rounds (in his gym) until one is badly hurt…just not a good individual. In saying that, that’s his personality. Technically he’s obviously a very, very sound boxer. I’m a fan of his skills but as a human being, the way he runs his gym and the way he carries himself…
Kavanagh talks about McGregor’s secret training
At an event in Sydney’s Star Casino, Coach Kavanagh says that preparations for a McGregor-Mayweather fight have been underway for some time. He also says the fight will happen in September, and if not, certainly by the end of the year.
It’s happening, 100 per cent. Before I came out here I had a sit down with Conor and we (put in place) a training plan. Right now he’s doing base level cardio training so that when I get back we can go into specific training. We have a ‘secret dojo’ set up with a championship-level boxing ring that will exactly mirror the situation when it happens. Where my gym is, the guy who owns my gym, owns the entire estate, and there’s a building — I’m kinda giving away a secret here — there’s a building at the back and he’s just going to give it to me until the fight is on. So we’re getting that kitted out. We’re going to make it into kind of a stadium with a full-sized boxing ring. We’ll have weekly or biweekly sparring sessions where we invite people in to make it feel like a fight and bring in different sparring partners.
What makes the Mayweather fight competitive? Well, Mayweather’s Mayweather, in terms of defensive boxing — I’ve studied Mayweather, I find this ‘Philly shell’ fascinating, how he’s able to keep himself safe — but everyone can be beat. He’s had trouble in the past with southpaws. Pacquiao got some good shots off on him. There were moments in that fight where Pacquiao could have done some things a little different. The way he was able to tie Pacquiao up on the inside — he’s not going to do that to us. If he tries to tie us up in the clinch, that’s not going to work. And [McGregor] has the death touch. If that lands, I don’t care if you’re Mayweather, Juneweather, Julyweather … you’re still going to go down.
Kavanagh: McGregor has started training for Mayweather fight
Coach Kavanagh says McGregor has started to put together the training agenda to fight Mayweather.
In my mind, it’s on. That’s the mentality we’re in. Like you said, there’s a lot of fingers in the pie on this one. There’s different promotions, different organizations, different commissions that are involved but as far as I’m concerned, I really believe it’s going to happen this year. That’s the mindset I have. Let the people in the suits worry about the paperwork. We’re training for it.
On the training program:
Boxing is one of the 10 skills you need for mixed martial arts. But now we’re only doing boxing so we can drop wrestling and jiu-jitsu and Thai boxing, we can just focus on the boxing. So of course we’re getting ready to fight arguably one of the best defensive boxers of all time, but the training will become simplified ’cause we only have to do boxing so it’s a new challenge I’m excited about.
Kavanagh: McGregor wrote list of things he did wrong after winning Aldo fight
In an interview with The Irish Mirror, Coach Kavanagh says McGregor wrote him an essay on everything he did wrong after knocking out Aldo for the world featherweight title.
When I meet someone in sport or business I’m always interested to find out, how did they get over their biggest loss? I’ve had plenty of losses and failures but it’s about what you do with them. You don’t see a loss or a failure as a reason to quit you see it as an opportunity to learn. Conor and I have done that since day one. We’ve had plenty of losses in the cage but we use them to improve ourselves, come back and have plenty of wins too. Certainly at the beginning if Conor had a loss he would treat it as a reason to quit and I’d have to drag him down from his house. But that doesn’t happen anymore. You see him at his last loss, as soon as the fight was over he was analysing what he did wrong. He was humble in defeat. We got back in the gym, got ourselves a four- month plan and showed the world what we can do with a loss. If I have a fighter and after a win they go on a bender for four-and-a-half weeks, I forget about them. They’re wasting my time. I always use this story that when Conor beat Aldo to unify the 145 level, he argues it was an 11- second fight but it was 13 seconds on the record book, one punch and it was over. But he’s the most self-critical fighter I’ve ever met, and that night we went out for a bit and when we came home he wrote me an essay on everything he’d done wrong. It was only a 13 second fight.
McGregor joins SBG boxing class
Coach Kavanagh posts an Instagram of McGregor taking a boxing class at SBG in Dublin.
One of our fighters taking the boxing class today.
https://www.instagram.com/p/BSBdSjMhq1A/
Kavanagh defends Conlan over hype accusation
In response to Kevin Iole’s comments implying that Conlan is being hyped:
I wrote this in my column, but I think this is the biggest push in the US any Olympian has gotten since @OscarDeLaHoya in 1992
— Kevin Iole (@KevinI) March 18, 2017
Kavanagh says Conlan has the skills to succeed:
I know Michael a little bit personally and he’s got the ‘x’ factor. Smart, thinks fast, witty, dresses sharp even down to how he cornered Conor into agreeing to walk him out for his debut…..brilliant. Not only winner of countless boxing titles but also winner of Ireland’s sports personality of the year. This is not someone sitting around waiting for outside influences to ‘push’ him….he’s out there every day doing the damn pushing! He’s actively making himself the ‘money fight’, not moaning at promoters about wanting the ‘money fight’. Combat sports like boxing and mma need more like him.
Kavanagh ‘can’t imagine’ McGregor not fighting Ferguson-Nurmgomedov winner
Coach Kavanagh says he expects McGregor to fight the winner of the UFC 209 bout between Ferguson and Nurmagomedov.
I would love the challenge of it, for Conor to test himself in that area. I’ll be honest, right from the beginning I’ve been hearing ‘you can’t do this, you can’t do that’ … We’re kind of used to being told to what we can’t do, but we don’t pay too much attention to it, we just get on and make things happen. I’ve said it before, the Nate rematch interests me a lot because it’s one-one and how the styles match up. Almost on a par with that, not much difference, would be the winner of Khabib-Ferguson this weekend. I think Khabib does it, I think Khabib will be the winner, so I think Khabib will be the match-up out of that. I find it hard to imagine not seeing [McGregor back in MMA]. Even if and when the Mayweather fight was going to happen, and he got that out of the way. I know, like myself, I do believe his true love is free combat sports and there is no ‘free-er’ combat sport than mixed martial arts. I can’t imagine him not fighting the winner of [Khabib vs. Ferguson]. Now we gotta see what happens with the Mayweather talks and all that, but yeah, I do believe that will happen.
Kavanagh: I always knew McGregor would become world champion
Kavanagh says he knew from the first fight that McGregor would become UFC world champion.
It was very obvious from early on that Conor had this unusual set of skills contained in the one person. It’s tempting to talk about Muhammad Ali when you talk about Conor just from the showman side of things. There is a certain set of skills, as Liam Neeson might say, that are required to become the no.1 in this world. And certainly being very good at the sport is a huge part of it. But to have the x-factor, to be able to have charisma, to be able to speak on the mic and be able to deal with the heavy media attention, that’s something that I don’t think you can be taught. That’s something that’s in somebody or it’s not. I’ve seen it before with guys who are incredible in the gym but the can’t do it on fight night or they can’t handle the pressures of dealing with a bunch of interviews and so on and so forth
McGregor celebrates coach’s 40th birthday
McGregor posts a photo with Kavanagh celebrating his coach’s 40th birthday in Dublin.
Happy birthday Coach Kavanagh we are toasting tonight!
https://www.instagram.com/p/BPjFik7hGi7/
Kavanagh: A Mayweather fight would make McGregor’s training a lot easier
Kavanagh says training for a Mayweather boxing match would be easier than the average MMA fight.
In a weird way, you’re getting prepared to fight one of the best boxers there’s ever been. But in another way, it would actually almost feel like a break for us because we wouldn’t have to keep up the other skill sets. In mixed martial arts your trying to work on seven or eight different skill sets. Whereas in boxing, it’s one…it’s just boxing. It’d almost be like a break to only have to work on one and not work on everything. If the deal is right and the two of them come to an agreement and that happens we’ll of course plan for that and bring in some of the experts. But I’ll still be playing my little role in the corner.
Kavanagh hints at McGregor-Mayweather fight
Coach Kavanagh posts an image to Instagram showing McGregor fighting Mayweather.
https://www.instagram.com/p/BPSxGReg2Il/
Responds to Streep comments
Kavanagh responds to Streep’s comments that MMA is “not an art”:
A lot has been made of Meryl Streep’s ‘calling out’ of Mixed Martial Arts as not being ‘the arts’. She’s 100% right, it’s sport. I was just impressed she said mixed martial arts and not ‘cage fighting’. People probably got a little defensive with the way she was clearly saying ‘the arts’ were so much superior to ‘sport’. What would we ever do without Hollywood!!? The great american writer Joseph Campbell said the closest he ever came to a truly spiritual experience was through athletics. I wouldn’t like to think of one activity better than the other – sport or art. Just do whatever you enjoy. I think people’s main issue with her teary well acted speech was that she tried to pass herself, and the rest of her ultra rich and ultra entitled liberal friends, off as ‘an outsider’. Yes Meryl, you’re just like an illegal immigrant or starving refugee. Fuck off. Just carry on adding to your 100s of millions you’ve earned from playing pretend. You’ve known nothing but extreme wealth and privilege your whole life, so don’t look down your nose at sport which has probably helped a lot more people than the expensive drama schools you attended. Happy Tuesday haha!
Kavanagh: McGregor fears he will sustain brain injury
After a special event at the Royal College of Surgeons, in Dublin, where Professor Healy addressed more than 50 high-level MMA fighters on the dangers of chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), a progressive degenerative disease found in athletes with a history of repetitive brain trauma. Kavanagh says that McGregor has concerns about the long-term implications of repeated blows to the head.
It’s a concern of every fighter. At that level of fighting the risk is very real. But I think you can add on two hands the number of clean head shots Conor has taken in 10 years of pro-fighting. His style of fighting answers that, because his style is not brawling. He doesn’t step in the pocket and exchange punches. His style is in and out – he’s very defensive. That style was born through not wanting to lose and not wanting to take head shots, and not wanting to damage the software. [The key is education] We can reach that lofty goal of this being the first generation with no incidents of CTE.
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
Posts pic with Kavanagh
McGregor posts a photo with coach Kavanagh at McGregor’s sister’s wedding.
Proudly holding up the deuce at the end of 2016 with my coach!
What a year and what a journey it has been! pic.twitter.com/819SrQmJa1— Conor McGregor (@TheNotoriousMMA) January 1, 2017
Kavanagh: It’s bizarre the new UFC owners haven’t called McGregor
Kavanagh says it’s bizarre that the new owners of UFC haven’t contacted McGregor yet.
He made it clear after his last fight that he’s keen to talk business with the UFC’s new owners,” he said. “I find it utterly bizarre that they’ve yet to make contact. Maybe they’re spending their time trying to get a solid framework in place. I’m not sure. It was much simpler in the old days in dealing with just Dana White and Lorenzo Fertitta. Now you’re almost wondering if you have to ring Mark Wahlberg or one of the other investors. Maybe Conan O’Brien is the new matchmaker. Who knows? These are strange, but interesting, times. We’ll have to see how this plays out. Certainly as the most valuable athlete on the UFC roster, you would think that he’d be heavily involved in these things but that hasn’t been the case yet.
Kavanagh responds to Mayweather’s caption contest
Coach Kavanagh responds to Mayweather’s McGregor’s photo caption contest.
I think it would be more interesting if he came up with a date or contract for a fight. That would be more interesting.
Aldo calls McGregor, Kavanagh ‘pieces of shit’
Aldo criticises the UFC, McGregor and Kavanagh:
The UFC has been a mess for a while now. Not only for me, it’s been happening way before that. It embarrassed featherweight and now embarrasses lightweight. Khabib Nurmagomedov signed two contracts to fight for the title and still hasn’t. We also have Demian Maia waiting at welterweight and Ronaldo Jacare [Souza] is waiting for even longer than that. It’s cool for me, I was a dominant champion for a long time, but what about Jacare’s situation? He’s always winning and doesn’t get his title shot. They tell him he’ll fight for the title and he never does. And it seems he never will. It’s a mess…I knew I would be the champion and he knows what happened to me in that fight will never happen again. It was known I would be champion again so I don’t have a problem with the way it happened. I’ve always said that having the belt around my waist is all that matters. No matter what, I’m the champion. I don’t care about what his coach says. Who is his coach anyway? I don’t know who he is. Or him. They’re all pieces of shit.
Kavanagh explains McGregor holding hands behind back
Coach Kavanagh says McGregor was holding his hands behind his back during his UFC 205 fight with Alvarez due to an injury. He says McGregor’s right index knuckle was hurt during his UFC 202 fight with Nate Diaz, and that was his way of protecting it in training, and also has the added advantage of fooling his opponent into trying to hit his head.
He found that if he actually held his right hand behind his back, it kind of reminded him not to throw it as much. That’s why he started reaching back and actually grabbing his hand. It was almost like a mental note: take care of the right hand…If you put your hands down, an untrained person will try to swing at your head. It’s a base instinct — I want to punch the guy in the head. If you have a very high level of striking, boxing like Conor does, you understand rules like that. I don’t think others are kind of catching up to that level of skill.
Kavanagh confirms McGregor-Mayweather talks
Coach Kavanagh confirms McGregor and Mayweather are in talks for a potential boxing fight in 2017.
If the odds were good enough, I’d put a few quid on it for next year. I’m not breaking any news saying that there’s conversations going back and forth for the last year or so. Is it getting any close? I don’t know, but it certainly wouldn’t surprise me that it’s going to happen. He’s 49-0. I’m sure he wants that 50th fight. It’s a nice number. Right now, ask the average guy on the street, who do you want to see Mayweather fight, what fight’s going to get the most interest, and it would be a superfight with Conor. Certainly stranger things have happened in combat sports than a Mayweather-Conor fight. I wouldn’t be surprised by it, so who knows? It’s one of the many options that are there for Conor, so let’s see how the next couple of weeks go.