There’s a lot of doubters and haters when it comes to Conor McGregor’s chances against Floyd Mayweather in their upcoming boxing bout on August 26th, but the people surrounding Conor certainly aren’t a part of that. His coaches and sparring partners continue to insist he’s going to shock the world, and while I wouldn’t expect them to say anything else, they’re certainly doing a good job of building McGregor up as a studious martial artist that is about to bring something new to the table.
McGregor’s head coach John Kavanagh recently gave an interview to McGregor’s own news site The Mac Life and laid out how preparations for Floyd Mayweather have allowed them to focus on Conor’s striking to a degree they’ve never been able to before during his time in MMA.
“You don’t get to do this too often, where you immerse yourself in one style,” Kavanagh said. “I read somewhere that people were saying that this would have a negative effect on Conor when he goes back to MMA … I think it’s only going to have a positive effect. When else could you shelve everything and focus on one art? Conor came from boxing and boxing was always in his heart. He was always showing me different boxing fights over the years, so now that he really gets to immerse himself in it and drag us all deep into that rabbit hole with him it is fascinating.
“We’re doing four times the amount of sparring for this camp than we would do for a regular MMA camp. That’s a huge amount of extra rounds. Whatever other parts you get ready for a fight whether it’s boxing or MMA, without doubt the most important part of that is sparring. That’s the sport. So you can be doing movement drills and weight-lifting and running and all of these different things that go with it but number one should be sparring, as long as it’s sensible.
“I really feel we’ve come along leaps and bounds in a very short time and we’re only halfway through this camp. We have another mesocycle when get out to Vegas and another big leap forward.”
All of this confidence could be complete bluster, but it’s the same kind of thing we’ve been hearing from Kavanagh and McGregor since their arrival in the UFC and they’ve backed up their words with results every time. Even if / when McGregor loses to Mayweather, it will be interesting to see how he looks in his UFC return (currently targeted for a UFC event around New Years Eve). Conor was already a pretty fearsome striker. One can only imagine how he’ll perform after honing his skills to Mayweather levels.
