John Kavanagh has revealed that Conor McGregor wasn’t able to train at full pace for UFC 189 due to a knee injury.
The SBG head coach explained that McGregor injured his knee during his training camp for UFC 189, on Tuesday’s MMA Hour.
According to Kavanagh, McGregor didn’t do any full wrestling training in preparation for his interim title fight with arguably the best wrestler in the featherweight division.
“We didn’t do one live round of MMA sparring or wrestling for this training camp because Conor had an injury. So we weren’t able to train at full pace. So this wasn’t us at full capacity either.”
“The injury is completely healed now, but it wasn’t until about two weeks before the fight that we felt it was 100%, but we still didn’t do any full rounds because we didn’t want to exasperate it. Really, the first round of real wrestling was done in that fight.”
He hinted that there was a slight concern over how McGregor would react to Mendes’ elite wrestling with little preparation for one of Money’s greatest weapons.
“On Sunday night we all went out. I said to Conor ‘I’ve got to be honest when were walking out to this fight it was in the back of my mind that we hadn’t done a single round of live wrestling.’ and I had my eyebrows raised and said ‘Well, let’s see what happens’ and he was laughing too.”
Kavanagh reiterated that the knee is now fully healed and that no surgery was required. He admitted that McGregor’s lack of wrestling practice in training was noticeable early in the fight, but with a proper camp behind him, a rematch against Mendes would play out very differently for both fighters.
“I think his timing on the sprawl wasn’t quite there. It started getting better as the fight went on, but do I think a rematch would be different? Yes, for both of them.”
Kavanagh added that when Aldo pulled out of the event with a rib injury, he thought about doing likewise for McGregor, but knew that the Notorious would never agree to it.
“When Aldo pulled out I thought maybe this is a good opportunity for us to pull out, but there was certainly no way Conor was having any of that.”
After being taken down four times, McGregor got the fight back standing and knocked Mendes out at the end of the second round to become the new interim featherweight champion.
