It is conventional wisdom that UFC featherweight champion Conor put on a massive amount of weight for his fight with lightweight Nick Diaz, at welterweight. Further, many believe that he was not used to the extra weight, and that contributed to his lack of stamina at UFC 196, and subsequent second round loss.
McGregor himself contributed to that belief when at an early pre-fight press conference that we would see a steak-fed McGregor.
“It’s a nice feeing, steaks everyday for me,” he said. “Steaks for breakfast, steaks for lunch, steaks for brunch. Grass-fed, massaged beef all day long. It’s a nice feeling and my body is reaping the rewards.”
“Like my coach said, ‘you’ve seen him on the salad, now see him on the steaks.’”
However, McGregor’s Strength & Conditioning coach John Conor appeared recently on The Manual podcast, and said that the fighter “fought at the weight that he walks around at – always.” The coach is co-owner of the Irish Strength Institute.
Coach Conor said the big change in McGregor’s body came after the fighter suffered an ACL injury fighting Max Holloway in 2013.
This is when he got into movement, this is when he got way more into strength and conditioning,” said the coach, as transcribed by Seamus Raferty for PunitArena. “And if you look at his body – his body has transformed a lot since then. And his big thing is that, you look at, his arse is bigger, which is more power, his hamstrings are a lot bigger, and his lower back is a lot bigger.”
When he came in to the Dublin fight [against Diego Brandao in July 2014], he was probably the biggest he had been in his career to that point.”
He’s kind of sat at that weight since then.
So, he weighed in at 168 [prior to UFC 196]. So you’re talking 76 kilos. He was probably 1 or 2 kilos heavier than he was fighting in Dublin, fighting in Boston, fighting in Vegas against Poirier, I wasn’t there for July against Mendes so I don’t know, Aldo again it was probably the same. So he was only 1 and a half, maybe 2 kilos heavier than he was in those other fights.”
We did more fitness work for [UFC 196] because we could. Because he was so tight at the weight for 145, we always had to be careful what we did because we couldn’t do too much. Because we didn’t want him putting on size, because it just makes it harder to get down there.
He was at his peak condition going into that fight.”
As to what went wrong, the coach echoed McGregor’s immediate post fight analysis – there was 0 pacing.
You load up and you get tired, explained the coach simply.
