Conor McGregor’s long-time coach John Kavanagh says the former UFC champion still intends to compete again despite suffering an ACL injury in the opening moments of his comeback fight against Max Holloway in July.
Speaking on The Ariel Helwani Show, Kavanagh said that while McGregor faces a lengthy rehabilitation process, he has learned over more than two decades working with the Irishman not to rule anything out.
“He says he does [fight again],” Kavanagh said. “I think I’m just too long around him, now 22 years around each other, and I’ve just seen him do too many things that seem to be impossible and he does them, repeatedly. So, if he says he does, I’m not going to doubt him.”
“We’ll see. I guess it’ll be next year until he can start returning to MMA type training. He’s going through his rehab now and he’s back. He looks pretty good to me. He looks to be moving around quite well,” he added.
However, Kavanagh was reluctant to speculate on what another comeback might look like for the 38-year-old.
“I just don’t know if he’s done with competition just yet,” he said. “What does that look like? I don’t know.”
Kavanagh also dismissed suggestions that McGregor had entered the Holloway fight carrying an existing injury, insisting that he had been in excellent physical condition ahead of his return.
“For the conspiracy theorists out there, he walked in with no injury. Zero injury. There was absolutely no injury,” Kavanagh stated.
“I can guarantee you that he was 100% going in. In fact, probably more healthy going into this one than the last few.”
The SBG Ireland head coach also explained that the jumping switch kick which resulted in the injury had been a planned opening move, one McGregor had rehearsed extensively throughout his training camp.
“If I hadn’t seen it done, like I don’t want to exaggerate, but at least 50 times in the months leading up to it, at least 50 different sparring sessions and done every time he started pad sessions— like it was just something he had just done to death,” Kavanagh revealed.
“I didn’t know what had happened. I wasn’t sure it was a slip or what had gone on, but it was obvious when he stood up that there was something had gone terribly wrong.”
