John Kavanagh
* * *
WIN OR LEARN
MMA, Conor McGregor and Me: A Trainer’s Journey
With Paul Dollery
Foreword by
Conor McGregor
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Epilogue
Illustrations
Acknowledgements
Follow Penguin
To Mam and Dad
Thanks for making me believe in myself
Foreword
by Conor McGregor
The first time I was introduced to John Kavanagh at his gym, ten years ago, I was slightly underwhelmed. Tom Egan, my friend at school, had been training in mixed martial arts for a while. I was boxing at a pretty good level, but I decided I wanted to give MMA a go. Tom assured me that John was the only man in the whole country to work with if you had ambitions to go somewhere in the sport. I took his word for it.
Before I met John, I had been picturing a big, imposing cage-fighting guru. In reality, he looked like a normal guy – more likely to be a primary school teacher than a master of combat. But it didn’t take long for my initial impression to change. When John began to share his knowledge, he distinguished himself as a unique individual and you soon understood how special he was. It was easy to see why he had such a big reputation.
Given my background in boxing, I was certain I could take to MMA like a duck to water and be a world champion in no time at all. But with each day I trained under John and gained an insight into the depth of his knowledge, I realized that there was so much I had to learn from this man. I may have been able to throw a punch before I set foot in Straight Blast Gym, but compared to an experienced martial artist like him, I was a novice with a long road ahead of me. But I knew I was working with a man who could guide me in the right direction. That’s exactly what John did and, ten years later, that continues to be the case. I believed from an early stage that this man could take me to where I wanted to go. I suppose you could call that my very first accurate prediction.
John’s passion for learning and teaching is inspiring. One of his greatest attributes as a coach is his ability to make very difficult things seem straightforward. He breaks them down in a way that I had never experienced before. In a boxing gym, you go in, you hit the bag, you skip rope, you spar and you go home. You rush in the door and you’re rushed back out. With John, the lesson is slowed down and demonstrated until it’s crystal clear to every individual.
He has successfully coached my teammates and me, in the gym and in the octagon, over the course of a decade and more, but his guidance extends into every aspect of our lives. I look to John for advice on everything, not just martial arts.
There was a time in my life when I was hanging around with the wrong people, getting up to no good, drifting away from the gym and down a dangerous path. There was no onus on John to intervene, but he went out of his way to ensure that I didn’t go beyond the point of no return. His intervention was a turning point, not just in my career as a martial artist, but in my life as a man.
John invested a lot of time and effort in me over the years, and it was always an objective of mine to repay him. When I started out at SBG, we were a small group of young fighters who shared a passion to make it to the top. To see the recognition that John has received since we made it there gives me a great sense of satisfaction. It fills me with the motivation to keep striving for more.
What would have become of my life if John Kavanagh hadn’t come into it? Of course, it’s impossible to answer that question now. All I know is I’m grateful that I don’t have to consider it.
1
I earn my living from coaching people how to fight. It may come as a surprise, therefore, to learn that until I was in my early twenties, I was terrified of fighting. I hated arguing, shouting, violence – all forms of conflict, basically. That’s not unusual, of course, but to be honest, I was a bit of a wimp – or, as some of the kids in school liked to tell me, a pussy.
I was raised in Nutgrove Avenue in Rathfarnham, a suburb on the south side of Dublin. My sister, Ann, had already been on the scene for two and a half years by the time I arrived on 18 January 1977. James, my brother, came along much later.
We lived in a cul-de-sac and most of the other kids in the estate were girls, which meant that I spent much of my time alone. There was one other boy but he was a lot older than me, so I was hardly ever allowed to play with him. While Ann was off with the other girls, I was hanging around with various local creepy-crawlies. From quite a young age I loved Spider-Man, and I was extremely interested in real spiders. (I still am: I have a tarantula beside my desk in my office. Don’t worry, he doesn’t wander around the gym at his leisure or anything – I keep him in a tank.) One of my favourite hobbies was feeding spiders. I’d go looking for ants and then throw them into the webs to observe the spiders as they ate them. That was my thing.
When I did try to hang around with Ann and her friends, I’d quickly be sent on my way. I was a boy and they were all girls, so I was seldom anything other than a source of irritation to them. Every once in a while, though, I’d get a tap on the shoulder and be told, ‘John, you’re going out with her now.’ As the only boy of a similar age in the area, I was sort of shared around among the girls as a token boyfriend. Unfortunately for me, this wasn’t due to my irresistibility: it was just a case of them lacking options.
My parents say that I was an easy kid to deal with, but Ann and James were a bit wild. I’d describe myself as similar to my mother – calm, introverted. It’s difficult to get me riled up. Ann and James share more of my father’s characteristics. He’s got a fiery temper, to say the least.
I was bullied quite a bit in school, and Ann was usually the one who came to my rescue. She always had my back. The main bully in our school was a boy called Steven. He was the kind of guy who’d steal your lunch, or your money on the rare occasion that you actually had any. Ann spotted Steven giving me some grief one day. She made a beeline for him and attacked him with an umbrella. That was the end of me being bullied by Steven. Hell hath no fury like a Dublin girl with a brolly who sees her little brother being picked on! But Steven wasn’t the only bully. I was never really in a proper fight: I usually just ran from it. When I did get punched, I wouldn’t hit back.
Even though we had different personalities, Ann and I were always very close. One day Ann was walking along a steel fence that separated our garden from our neighbours’. She fell and took a nasty bang – and I cried more than she did. Whenever I’d be given something – even if it was something as simple as a biscuit – I’d always ask, ‘What about Ann?’ I wouldn’t take anything unless there was some for Ann as well. We were very tight.
My dad and I were never close when I was growing up, and it wasn’t until I was in my late twenties that I started to form any sort of a relationship with him. Along with my mam, my dad did a brilliant job of raising us and I wouldn’t change a thing, but he was loud and aggressive and revelled in shouting and arguing, whereas I was the exact opposite. My dad wouldn’t shy away from standing up to ten people; I was frightened by the prospect of standing up to on
e, never mind an entire group. He’d make me watch Match of the Day – probably in the hope that I’d come to share his passion for soccer – but I absolutely despised it. The theme tune still drives me mad when I hear it now.
But the years have changed our relationship significantly. Now, I would honestly say that he’s my best friend. As we grew older, we probably began to understand each other better. Even now, though, he loves to have an argument. If we’re both sitting together quietly, he’ll often just manufacture an argument. That’s his nature. My dad and James are constantly bickering. They’re rarely in each other’s company without disagreeing over something silly. I can’t fathom how people can thrive on stuff like that – it just seems tiring to me – but for them it’s different.
It’s similar to how I feel about Brazilian jiu-jitsu: I enjoy that as much as they enjoy having a row.
Moving out of the family home when I got older definitely had a positive impact on my relationship with my dad. When you move out, you finally start to see your parents for the human beings they are. Until then, they’re just your parents.
Apart from my dad arguing with whoever was in his vicinity about whether the sky is blue, we had a pretty standard Irish family home. My dad is an amazing man. He was the manager at the sports complex at De La Salle College – where I went to school – and later he became a builder. He’s very independent and self-motivated. If I’ve got an entrepreneurial spirit, that’s probably where it came from. My dad has no plans to retire. He has said many times that he’ll be carried off a building site. He loves it. He’ll never stop.
Looking at what he did with his family as we were growing up, I have so much admiration for him. He was incredibly hard-working, so while we weren’t a wealthy family, we were never left short of anything we needed. The flip side of that was that we were never given money. Other kids used to talk about getting pocket money and I thought that was amazing. We never got that. Ever. Getting money for doing nothing, that sounded too good to be true. And in our house it was.
I was always kept on my toes by my dad. Never once, as a kid, did I get to have a lie-in. And if I ever made the mistake of saying there was nothing to do, he would quickly have a list of duties for me to take care of, whether it was washing clothes or cutting the grass. From the time I turned fourteen I’d often go out and work with him on the weekends and during school holidays.
I was definitely a mammy’s boy, though. My mother was a calm, reserved, quiet character who never got upset, so I was able to relate to her much more easily. She did some cleaning jobs but, like many Irish mothers in those days, her priority was to keep the household running smoothly. When I was in secondary school, every lunchtime I’d come home and she’d have my toasted ham-and-cheese sandwich ready. I’d eat that while watching Neighbours; that was my routine for my little forty-five-minute break. I loved that. My mam and I would barely say anything to each other but that’s the way we liked it: peace and quiet. It was perfect – unless my dad came home early. Then Neighbours would have to go off because we weren’t allowed to watch TV before 6 p.m. My dad cared little for Jason and Kylie’s wedding as long as there was homework still to be done.
Not that we were given much, since for my last couple of years in primary school at De La Salle, we didn’t actually have a teacher. The principal oversaw our class but he would be in and out of the room throughout the day, so most of our time was spent alone in there. It seems crazy in retrospect – I suppose it was because of cutbacks. Left to our own devices, we’d clear the desks out to the sides and play Royal Rumble. I was the guy on the door, keeping an eye out in case the principal was on the way back.
When I went into secondary school, I was in the lowest stream of students. I had done terribly in the entrance exams because I’d spent my last two years of primary school messing around. I wasn’t outstanding academically, but I was pretty good when it came to studying and applying myself. I wasn’t one of the cool kids, but I wasn’t part of the nerdy group either. In fact, I was mostly on my own, or with my best friend, Derek Clarke. Derek and I both started keeping tarantulas.
When my father was in his late twenties, he started doing a little bit of karate. It was the first time he had trained in anything other than soccer. He had been a good goalkeeper back in his day and he also refereed in the League of Ireland. Soccer was undoubtedly his passion, but he knew from quite early on that I wasn’t interested.
I was four years old when my dad brought me to my first karate class. There were clubs near to where we lived, but instead we made the journey to a club on Sheriff Street in the north inner city because that was where my dad had trained. It was a twenty-kilometre round trip from our house, and we didn’t have a car, but my dad would put me on the crossbar of his bike and we’d cycle there and back. The place was run by an old-school Japanese instructor: a classic sensei kind of guy with a real mystique about him. In the early 1980s, most people in Dublin hadn’t come from any further afield than Mayo, so to see a Japanese man was quite unusual.
I started going to the karate classes two or three times a week. I loved it right from the beginning, but not because I was learning how to punch and kick. What I enjoyed most about it was the quietness. The serene atmosphere. When I attended the classes, I never saw it as the beginning of an education in fighting. The sequences – repeating patterns – seemed more akin to dancing than fighting. What I was actually doing didn’t really matter. It was the environment that was important. I was never thinking: I’m learning to fight here because that’s what I’m going to be doing for the rest of my life. I liked quiet time and the karate classes afforded me plenty of it.
From the start, the instructor told my dad that he saw something unique in me for a child so young. I was able to concentrate entirely on the class without being distracted. When I’m asked by parents what age a child needs to be to start training, I always tell them it’s better to just bring the child down to see how they get on, because everyone is different. I could focus on a sixty-minute karate class when I was four, whereas my concentration on other things might not have been so great. A very traditional karate class isn’t easy for a child to focus on; but it suited me perfectly.
When I got bullied as a child, my knowledge of karate didn’t really help. I never found that it was a good form of self-defence. Learning karate in a hall doesn’t prepare you for the pressure of being involved in a fight on the street. When physical altercations broke out, I froze. It’s similar to a response you sometimes see in nature when an animal is being preyed upon. Animals often freeze, in the hope that their attacker will just go away. For all the good karate did me when people picked on me, I may as well have been learning ballet.
I continued to train in karate throughout my childhood, and became increasingly competitive. At twelve, I was awarded my black belt. As I entered my teens, I started training under a new instructor in the evenings at the hall in De La Salle College. There, I was awarded my second-degree black belt. At the age of fifteen I became an All-Ireland Kenpo Karate champion at the National Basketball Arena in Tallaght. I trained extremely hard for that and I was very proud of the achievement at the time. There was even an article about it in the local newspaper, including a big picture of yours truly. For a long time afterwards, my granddad carried the article around in his wallet and he’d show it to everyone he’d meet.
When I was eighteen, I was introduced to an instructor from a different club. He seemed kind of cool. He was a big guy who wore a red karate suit, whereas we all wore black. I was sort of mesmerized by him. When he said I’d be welcome to train at his club, I didn’t hesitate to take him up on the invitation.
One morning, my karate instructor at De La Salle arrived in the hardware shop where I had a weekend job. He had found out that I was also training elsewhere and he wasn’t pleased. He completely lost his cool with me, berating me in front of colleagues and customers. I couldn’t actually believe he was so angry, or understand why. I was still training at his
club too, as I had been doing for five or six years. I was just a kid who enjoyed karate and wanted to do it as often as I could. But he couldn’t handle that. It was a pretty juvenile reaction from him. I firmly believe that training in different environments is healthy and should be encouraged, but he didn’t see it that way. In the middle of a busy shop, I stood there in silence, gobsmacked, as this man roared at me about disloyalty and told me I was no longer welcome to train at his club. The incident left such a sour taste in my mouth that I stopped training in karate entirely shortly afterwards.
Being bullied remained a part of my life in secondary school. Outwardly I remained placid and unaffected, but inside it was eating me up. There wasn’t a huge amount of physical violence; it was mostly pushing and shoving, and a general sense of constant insecurity. If somebody whacked me in the back of the head, I’d just keep walking. I never fought back. I would just take the punishment and wait until it all passed over. In spite of all the bullying I experienced during my youth, I was never badly hurt until one night when I was eighteen. I was out with some friends, having a few drinks in a bar in Rathmines called The Station. We intended to move on afterwards to Sarah’s Nightclub in Rathfarnham. When you’re at that age, getting into nightclubs en masse isn’t easy, so we agreed to make our way out to Rathfarnham in smaller groups.
As I was walking to the taxi rank in Rathmines with my then-girlfriend, we passed a group of six or seven guys who had pulled a cyclist off his bike, seemingly for no reason, and begun to unload on him. Everyone around just kept their heads down and walked on by, and so did we. But the cyclist was getting a fairly decent kicking, and I started thinking: I have to do something here, I can’t just allow this to happen. I went back and tried to reason with the guys who were beating him up: ‘Come on, lads. He’s had enough.’
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