John Kavanagh, Conor McGregor’s longtime mentor and head coach, took to social media to run through his post-fight analysis. The world watched in horror as McGregor, like Anderson Silva and Chris Weidman before him, broke his leg. Far from Poirier being the fragile one, it appears that McGregor was nursing an ankle injury going into the Octagon last night.
In his post-fight analysis, Kavanagh confirmed the presence of a niggling ankle issue for Conor: “Little bit of that ankle injury had been aggravated during that camp. We’d gotten a scan on it. Did that have a small part to play in weakening it? I don’t know.
McGregor’s coach confirms pre-fight ankle injury, slams Joe Rogan’s post-fight interview
There might have been something in there. It seems unusual that a young healthy fit man can wrap his foot around an elbow without there being something there before. But you know, you can play those guessing games all day long.”
Clearly the issue was enough for McGregor’s camp to call in a professional to look at it. Conor McGregor notoriously fought with and through injuries in the past, including an ACL tear mid-fight early in his career. Kavanagh remained mercurial about the lead-up to the fight, although he was more forthcoming with his opinion on McGregor’s post-fight interview.
He was unimpressed with Joe Rogan’s interview approach: “His foot is literally hanging down. It’s a clean fracture of the fibula and tibia, it went straight through, the foot’s hanging down.
“You can only imagine the rush of hormones and what’s going on in your body, the pain, it was on fire. And then someone sits down and sticks a microphone in your face. ‘How are you feeling about the end?
Come on. Come on! When has he ever not been graceful at the end? Let’s get backstage. Let’s get a proper assessment from a doctor. Let’s get an x-ray. So I was pretty miffed at the idea of sticking a microphone in his face at that point.”
Kavanagh, however, hopes for a brighter future for Conor McGregor. The UFC’s pundits might have declared the Irishman done and dusted, but John Kavanagh doesn’t think so:
“He truly loves this and it’s hard to imagine him not wanting to come back, not wanting to do this again. Because we really just got this fantastic rhythm.
He’s turning 33, which to me is a peaking time where strength meets conditioning and mental and physical and spiritual maturity, everything’s coming together. I think we have a couple of years of this ahead of us.”
What do you think? Is Conor McGregor truly finished in MMA, or are his best years ahead of him? Let us know in the comments.
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