Coach pulls back curtain on Conor camp
“Now Conor McGregor gets up and does an hour’s yoga. Then he’ll move around, go do a session, and come home and stretch. It’s very controlled, but it is doing wonders.”
Conor McGregor’s striking coach for the past ten years Owen Roddy spoke recently with Tom Rooney for MMAjunkie, and opened the curtains on the “Notorious” training camp at MacMansion in Las Vegas.
Roddy runs Primal MMA in Dublin, and is a protege of McGregor’s head trainer SBG-Ireland founder John Kavanagh.
Conor has got very smart in how he’s training, Roddy said. He doesn’t overdo it, because for years we all used to – sparring hard, wrestling hard and training three or four times a day. Now Conor gets up and does an hour’s yoga. Then he’ll move around, go do a session, and come home and stretch. It’s very controlled, but it is doing wonders for him.
He’s got so much faster. He used to be fast, but now that he’s got more flexible, he’s way faster and stronger in all these different positions. He always had huge power in his hands, but the power he is now generating in his spinning kicks is devastating.”
Conor is very creative, and you never know what he’s going to want to do. He’s up all night thinking of MMA, and it’s on his mind 24/7. So when we’re on the pads, I’m basically a facilitator. Because we’ve done this together for so long, I tend to be able to pick up what he wants to do very quickly. I’ll throw in the odd idea, and if he likes it, he’ll keep. If he doesn’t, he’ll throw it away.”
Mendes has a powerful overhand right, and that’s really it. For me, I just don’t think he’s going to be able to get close to Conor. Not only does Conor have very long arms, but he fights at range, where he bounces in and out, so I think Mendes will have a hard time closing the distance.
I think maybe the first or second round. In a 25-minute fight, the odds of you being hit in the face is very high, especially against Conor McGregor. Once he does that, the end is near then. It’s matter of how long Mendes can stay in there, but nobody can take a beating from Conor for 25 minutes.