Famed MMA coach Firas Zahabi thinks Conor McGregor’s gets far too much criticism over his jiu-jitsu skills, but he still feels he has weaknesses on the mat.
McGregor has just three losses on his professional record and all three came by way of submission. Artemij Sitenkov got him with a knee bar, Joseph Duffy’s finishing move was an arm triangle and Nate Diaz put him out of his misery with a rear-naked choke.
With so many eyes witnessing the Stockton native force the tap from the featherweight champion at UFC 196, it became fashionable to criticise the Notorious’ ground game. However, Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu black belt Zahabi thinks McGregor is no slouch on the mat.
IT'S ALL OVER!!!
Diaz submits @TheNotoriousMMA in Round 2! #UFC196 https://t.co/CAFnZzxXvq— eir Sport (@eirSport) March 6, 2016
Zahabi explained in his pre-fight breakdown ahead of UFC 205 that McGregor had made improvements in his ground game and his defensive wrestling from the first time he fought Diaz to the rematch at UFC 202.
“I think Conor’s jiu-jitsu’s good. Everyone’s beating him up on that because he lost one time to a choke. His jiu-jitsu is good.”
Diaz completed just one of seven takedown attempts in his sequel bout against the Dubliner. Zahabi was impressed with the manner in which McGregor stuffed them, particularly when Diaz appeared to have the double-leg locked in.
“His counter-wrestling has improved. I felt that in the second Diaz fight his takedown defence looked a lot better. He looked more solid, he looked more calm defending the double-leg. Diaz had some nice locked doubles – he locked his arms around the legs, usually that’s a takedown. McGregor got out. He only got caught with a foot sweep, so his leg defence got a lot better.”
Although improvements have been made, he still believes McGregor has a tendency to crumble when he’s in bad positions on the mat. He thought this was very prevalent in the build-up to the submission that ended his first fight with Diaz.
“I think it’s a positional weakness problem. Some guys are really good when you’re in their guard. When they’re in your guard, they do well. But when you mount them, take their back or take side control, they fall apart.”
“Why? They’re positionally weak. If you guys remember the Diaz fight when Diaz took his back and mounted him first, he looked positionally weak. His mount defence is very weak. His back defence looked. His hands weren’t doing what they’re supposed to do and his legs in the mount defence and the back defence were not doing what they’re supposed to do. They looked inactive.”
The coach of elite fighters such as Georges St-Pierre, Rory MacDonald and Duffy has an interesting take on how this difficulty in dealing with adversity in the ground developed in McGregor’s game. He believes it may have something to do with his star power.
“Why that is, in my opinion, I’ve seen it before, when guys come into the gym and they see a superstar, they don’t want to put that superstar in a bad position. If they sweep him, they’ll release him. If they take his back, they’ll let him out. So that superstar never gets to work in a bad position. That’s a very common scenario.”
“If you go to McGregor’s gym and you choke him out in front of everybody, everybody’s going to be like, ‘Hey, what are you doing? That’s our hero, that’s our guy. You don’t do that to Conor. You don’t do that to the guy who built this house.’ So there’s a respect thing.”
McGregor’s set to take on the extremely well rounded Eddie Alvarez for the lightweight belt in UFC 205’s main event. Alvarez will be the bigger, more powerful grappler in the match-up and Zahabi believes that if he can get Conor into difficult positions on the mat, it could be a very easy night for the Underground King.
“If Eddie Alvarez mounts Conor, or takes Conor’s back, we’re going to see the same thing. If McGregor’s in the guard or on top, he’ll do fine because he’s not in a bad, bad position, but if he’s in a bad position expect it to go south very quick.”
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