Eddie Alvarez already has a gameplan for Conor McGregor. All he has left to do is to implement it.
Famed MMA coach Mark Henry is a tactical genius when it comes to the art of fighting, and the likelihood is he’s been developing the perfect plan to beat Conor McGregor for a while.
His fighter Eddie Alvarez will defend his lightweight belt against the Notorious in the headline act of the massive UFC 205 card from Madison Square in November. Henry’s master plan to beat McGregor was already set in advance of Alvarez booking his Red Panty Night, as the fighter revealed on The Countdown with Michael Bisping on Sirius Xm.
“I believe Mark Henry’s been game-planning for Conor because he thought Frankie Edgar was going to go after him. Before we had the fight, Mark Henry already had the gameplan set. We knew what we wanted to do, knew what Conor was strong at, knew what he was weak at.”
Alvarez sees McGregor’s back-to-back fights against Nate Diaz as a godsend because it gave his coach a good indicator of where his game is at. He believes that all the evidence is there to suggest it’s a very favourable match-up for him.
“The good thing is he just recently fought, so you can’t change that much in that small amount of time. We’ve got a good scanner report, a good gameplan and I just think stylistically the match-up is my fight to win if I go put there and do what I’m good at. I’m not going to say it’s easy, because no fight is easy and especially against a guy who has a crowd like that on his side, but I’m going to get the job done quickly and violently.”
Conor McGregor vs Eddie Alvarez: 10 things you need to know about the lightweight champion #UFC205 https://t.co/qUGV2v5wqS
— SportsJOE (@SportsJOEdotie) September 27, 2016
A lot of people have been pointing to Alvarez’s win against former lightweight king Anthony Pettis as a potential blueprint for how he might fight against McGregor. Like McGregor, Pettis is a very technical, precise and flashy striker and Alvarez utilised his wrestling acumen brilliantly to grind out a decision win.
However, Alvarez doesn’t believe he has to reuse this tactic against Pettis. He went as far to say that he had an off-night against Showtime because he was still struggling to get to grips with Henry’s unique coaching style.
“Here’s the thing about the Pettis fight. People watch that fight and they assume I’m going after Conor the exact same way, that’s not necessarily the same. I was only with Mark Henry for two months and his system is a lot of codes. You need to be able to communicate in order to fight his system. I didn’t know the codes going into that fight, I didn’t know anything.”
“I wasn’t communicating with my coach like I should have been. There wasn’t a lot to do. I just had to go where he was weak and exploit. My game has grown leaps and bounds since the Anthony Pettis fight. Not only that, confidence-wise in my team and my coaches and myself. I’ve come a long way since that fight. Like you’ve seen in the dos Anjos fight, I’m committing to my punches and committing to my strikes, doing things a lot differently and I’m finding my power now.”
Let’s see if he can find his power against the man who Firas Zahabi thinks possess a “death touch” in his left hand. November 12 is the date, Madison Square Garden is the venue. This one’s not to be missed.
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