Coach on who McGregor fights next: FMJ, GSP, Diaz, 209 winner?

Conor McGregor’s coach, SBGi founder John Kavanagh appeared recently on Submission Radio and discussed his most famous student, Conor McGregor. Notorious is taking a break from the sport as he and long-time partner Dee Devlin await the birth of their first child, in May. The sole contest McGregor has expressed interest in is a boxing match with Floyd Mayweather.

“It seems like it’s coming,” said the coach, who qualified the remark by saying he was not privy to the negotiation. “When or how definite, I don’t know, but it’s looking more likely. And the two guys seem to want it and they’re making moves towards it, but I won’t lie, I don’t know is the short answer. There seems to be a lot of steps to get over with various commissions involved and different promotions involved and so on and so forth, but it’s a fight that’s getting more and more momentum every day and more and more people want to see it. So if you ask just me, my personal uneducated opinion on it, I would say that I believe it’s gonna happen.

Kavanagh was asked if he was a fan of the potential fight.

One hundred percent,” he replied. “I love challenges and Conor is a lot more competitive than me, but I would love the challenge of it and the spectacle of it and the level of interest. … I would love to see the challenge for Conor to test himself in that area. I’ll be honest, like right from the beginning I’ve been used to hearing, “You can’t do this, you can’t do that, you can’t. You won’t train somebody up to a UFC-level from Ireland. You don’t have wrestling or grappling. It’s impossible to fight for a world title. It’s impossible to hold two world titles. It’s impossible to have a thousand-square meter gym dedicated to MMA.’ So I’ve just heard those things my whole life and yet here I am, I’m talking to you and I have a best-selling book and I’m coming to Australia to talk about that and I’ve got a world-renowned gym. So we’re kind of used to being told what we can’t do, but we don’t pay too much attention to it, we just get on and make things happen.

The coach also discussed the variety of opponents that McGregor could fight next.

It’s kind of two ways to look at it,” he said. “Like, my love is MMA. That’s the sport that I love. I think any other combat sport is a subset of mixed martial arts. Mixed martial arts is the freest form of combat sport there is. So that’s my love and I’m a big fan of Conor’s fighting in MMA. So yeah, my number one thing would be for Conor to fight MMA. That’s my number one thing. That’s my selfish number one, what I would like to see.

“Which opponent? I’ve said it before – the Nate [Diaz] rematch interests me a lot because it’s 1-1 and how the styles match up. Almost on a par with that, not much difference will be the winner of Khabib and Ferguson this weekend. I think Khabib does it, so I think Khabib will be the winner. So Khabib will be the match up out of that.

“Below that would be GSP. Purely because GSP was an incredible fighter, big fan of him, I’ve learnt a lot from watching his fights, but it’s a long time since he’s fought and the game changes very, very quickly and I think Khabib is sort of like a better version of GSP. Although we don’t know, it’s hard to tell how GSP and Khabib would match up. But yeah, MMA-wise, Nate or almost on a par winner of Khabib/Ferguson.

Khabib Nurmagomedov and Anthony Ferguson fight on Saturday in the co-main event of UC 209, and the coach was asked if McGregor would fight the winner.

I find it hard to imagine not seeing that,” he replied. “You know, even with Conor getting the – if and when the Mayweather fight was to happen and he got that out of the way, I know, like myself, I do believe his true love is free combat sports and there is no freer combat sport than mixed martial arts and he is the UFC lightweight champion. He did only win it a couple of months ago, so he is the lightweight champion. So I can’t imagine him not fighting the winner of that. We gotta see what happens with the Mayweather talks and all that, but yeah I do believe that will happen, yes.

Lastly the coach was asked if there were still things he wanted to accomplish.

Right from day one, my very first gym – like you said, we sometimes referred to it as ‘the Garage’ or as ‘the shed’, and I started that 16 years ago when I came out of university,” Kavanagh began. “And one of the very first guys to walk in my door was an Aussie – a purple belt, Ben Power. Now he runs SBG Sydney. And he got me going. Back then, 16 years ago if you met a purple belt you were basically meeting god. We were all a bunch of raw white belts and he gave me a great start.

“But to answer your question of if I have any more goals – honestly, I’m obviously very strongly associated with Conor McGregor and all his success, but I would see it as somewhat a failure as a coach to produce one person that’s reached the top. I wanna – for my own self to be honest more than anything else – I wanna show myself that the training methods and how we go about doing things is an effective way, and to do that you gotta produce more than one champion.

John Kavanagh will be flying down to Australia for a special event hosted by Submission Radio “Win or Learn – An Evening with John Kavanagh”. Tickets are on sale for both Sydney and Melbourne shows: •Sydney April 7th
•Melbourne April 18th