Win or Learn: MMA, Conor McGregor and Me: A Trainer's Journey

by John Kavanagh

  When fight night finally arrived and we made that first walk to the octagon, the noise the Irish fans generated was absolutely deafening. I had actually helped Matt Thornton with cornering duties when Rory Singer fought for the UFC in Belfast in 2007, but this was one of my own fighters so it was a much bigger occasion for me. The UFC was the reason I fell in love with this sport in the first place. Just over twelve years earlier, I was in awe as I watched these guys battling it out inside that octagon for the first time. Now a fighter I had coached was about to become one of them. Thinking about that aspect of it was quite overwhelming, so I tried to put it to the back of my mind.

  Standing cageside behind Tom as Bruce Buffer introduced him to the crowd – ‘From DUB-LINNN, IRELAND …’ – I had to resist the urge to pinch myself. For years I had been watching Bruce roar the names of fighters from the USA, Brazil and other parts of the world, but now it was the turn of an Irishman. An Irishman who was part of a team that had been based out of a tiny shed in Phibsboro just six years earlier.

  As for the fight itself, there’s no point in sugar coating it. Hathaway was able to secure a takedown, dominate in top position and force a stoppage due to strikes with twenty-four seconds remaining in the first round. Stylistically, it was one of the most difficult match-ups Tom could possibly have been given. With a little bit of good fortune, perhaps things could have been different. He just wasn’t prepared for a guy of that kind of grappling calibre yet. There was absolutely no shame in losing to John Hathaway, who went on to do extremely well in the UFC and has since been unlucky to see his progress hampered by injuries.

  In spite of the defeat, nobody was feeling despondent afterwards. We didn’t get the win, but we learned a hell of a lot. Having experienced coaching one of my fighters in the UFC, I realized that, while we weren’t quite at that level just yet, we were certainly within touching distance. Up until that point, the established fighters in the UFC seemed like they were up on a pedestal, looking down on small teams like us. What UFC 93 taught me was that it wouldn’t be long before we caught up. We didn’t need to rip up the blueprint and start again from scratch. I had been wondering if we needed to train in America in order to go to the next level, but now I believed that if we continued to do what we had been doing all along, we’d soon reach the top.

  I had been giving the other teams far too much kudos. In the warm-up rooms throughout the week, rolling with some of the guys from the other camps and watching them on the pads, I realized that there was nothing extraordinary about them. Okay, we were a little bit behind, but that was purely because they had been doing it longer. There was absolutely nothing daunting about what they were doing.

  I also felt that the family vibe we had among ourselves was something other teams didn’t have. Our team was basically a bunch of crazy kids in their late teens and early twenties. They were all like siblings and that was something special. Some of our most promising fighters were guys who had joined the gym quite recently – the likes of Cathal Pendred, Chris Fields, Paddy Holohan and Artem Lobov. The SBG fight team was really beginning to blossom and many observers were telling me that I was dealing with a golden generation of young fighters. When we competed with other gyms, my fighters were mowing down their opponents. I suppose that made me realize that maybe we were doing things a little differently, and for the better. It was an ‘iron sharpens iron’ scenario in the gym, with everybody on the team pushing each other on. All my fighters were pulling in the same direction, and that kept the standards high. The way I saw it, we were in the lab all week preparing, and Saturday-night shows were where we ran the experiments. More often than not, the results were encouraging.

  In the days after UFC 93 I kept telling myself: Some day we’re going to be major players in the UFC, and that day isn’t very far away.

  Tom Egan’s contract had been for four fights, but the UFC released him after that defeat. Was that a harsh call? You could argue it both ways, but I wasn’t surprised. Four-fight deals are standard entry-level contracts for fighters joining the UFC, but that’s for the benefit of the organization, not the fighter. They don’t actually guarantee you four fights. If you turn out to be a superstar, the UFC have got you tied down; but if you don’t perform, they can cut you loose without offering a second bite at the cherry. Unfortunately, Tom wouldn’t get another chance, but he had blazed a trail for his teammates to follow.

  UFC 93 merely added to my desire to achieve success. I was much stronger at the end of that week than I was at the beginning. Now that we knew how to get to the UFC, the next step was to ensure that the next person through the door had what was required to stay there.

  7

  I’ve had some success in many areas as a coach, but one thing I could never quite do in those years was to convince Conor McGregor to embrace the art of Brazilian jiu-jitsu. Conor had a laissez-faire attitude when it came to grappling. He really only trained in it when I forced him to. What’s the point of grappling when you can just knock people out instead? That was Conor’s outlook.

  After the weaknesses in that area of his game were exposed in his defeat to Artemij Sitenkov, I hoped that he might be inspired to change his approach. But he remained defiant. Conor was adamant that he’d never find himself in that situation again. I tried my best to stress the importance of all aspects of mixed martial arts to him, but he was certain that all he needed to reach the top was the power and precision in his left hand. When he bounced back from the Sitenkov setback with a couple of first-round TKO wins, that belief was only further enhanced.

  With his record standing at 4–1, Conor was offered a Cage Warriors fight on Saturday, 27 November 2010. It was to be a lightweight fight at Neptune Stadium in Cork against an undefeated guy named Joseph Duffy, who was coming off a stint on The Ultimate Fighter, the UFC’s reality TV series. Duffy was accomplished in all areas of the game and more experienced than Conor too, having been competing in a wide range of martial arts from a young age, so we knew it would be a sizeable challenge. In a large cage for one of the top promotions in Europe and in front of proper TV cameras, this was Conor’s biggest fight so far.

  Duffy was supposed to fight Tom Egan in a welterweight bout not too long before Cage Warriors 39. It was on a small show in Donegal. As we do for every professional bout, we weighed in twenty-four hours before the fight. When Tom turned up on the afternoon of the fight, the promoter claimed there were same-day weigh-ins. He wanted Tom to lose a kilogram, but there was no way I was sending one of my fighters into a sauna to cut weight just a few hours before taking head shots in a fight. So that fight never happened; but having seen Duffy there that day, I knew he was a big guy and that he’d have a size advantage when he faced Conor. While Duffy was coming down from welterweight, Conor was moving up from featherweight.

  Conor clipped him with a big shot after just twenty seconds, which opened up a significant cut above Duffy’s eye. Duffy then managed to counter Conor’s combination with a single-leg takedown. Sixteen seconds after Conor’s back hit the mat, the fight was over. As had been the case against Sitenkov, Conor didn’t have the grappling skills to handle himself when the fight was taken to the ground, and Duffy very comfortably secured a submission with an arm-triangle choke. The fight had lasted a total of thirty-eight seconds.

  When we headed back up the road to Dublin after the fight and Conor and I went our separate ways, it was difficult to escape the feeling that I was probably never going to see him again. Given how he had reacted to his only other defeat, I expected him to go missing again – and this time I wasn’t going to chase after him.

  When I arrived at the gym on Monday morning to find Conor on the mats, I was massively surprised. Just thirty-six hours after being beaten, he was back in the gym and ready to right the wrongs. We had a chat and Conor admitted that although he was hugely disappointed with the result, he was by no means disconsolate.

  ‘Fuck it, shit happens. I know where I went wrong and I know that you can show me how to fix it. Le
t’s do it,’ he insisted.

  This time, Conor’s only response was to get back up and persevere. From that day onwards, I never had to worry about Conor’s commitment to grappling. Within a few months, he had begun to appreciate everything that’s good about BJJ, wrestling and other forms of grappling. Then there was no stopping him. He couldn’t get enough of it.

  Joseph Duffy had succeeded where I had failed. He was responsible for Conor’s acceptance that grappling wasn’t an optional part of MMA. I’ll always be grateful to Joe for that. In my mind, that Monday was Conor McGregor’s first day as a professional MMA fighter. Conor had been a member of the SBG team for four years at that stage, but that was the first time that I really knew he was in it for the long haul. It felt like a turning point. He still exuded the same remarkable levels of confidence, but at the same time he accepted that there was plenty of work to be done if he wanted to be the best. Recognizing where he needed to improve was a clear indication of how much he had matured since he first came to the gym. Better late than never.

  Nowadays, if somebody comes to SBG from a striking background and says they don’t like grappling, I have to pull them to one side and tell them that’s not going to work. It’s okay if grappling isn’t your favourite part of mixed martial arts, but you can’t simply ignore it. Otherwise the sport of MMA just isn’t for you. You can’t pick and choose the parts of the game that you want to focus on if you have aspirations to go far. I won’t allow someone to say: ‘I hate grappling.’ I make them amend that to: ‘Although grappling is not my favourite aspect of MMA right now, I’m excited about learning and improving it.’ I believe we become what we continuously say we are, so the words we use are important.

  Conor proved his commitment by taking a fight for the following February – eleven weeks after his defeat to Duffy. The bout was at featherweight, which meant he needed to keep his weight low over Christmas – not an easy task. Conor’s decision was another strong sign that his attitude had completely changed as a result of what had happened in Cork. He worked on all areas of his game in preparation for the next fight, which was against Hugh Brady in Derry. Now he was finally ready to respect every facet of martial arts en route to achieving his goals. Having said that, again it was his hands that did the damage. After dropping Brady with a right uppercut, Conor followed up with ground-and-pound to get the stoppage after two minutes and thirty-one seconds of the first round.

  Conor fought four times in as many months in the first half of 2011. All four fights ended in victories by KO or TKO, three of them in the first round. One of those contests lasted just sixteen seconds – a pretty drawn-out affair compared to the next one, which was a four-second knockout. Due to the fact that Conor was using his striking to clock up those wins, it might have appeared that he was still just a boxer who was a novice on the ground. But between the four walls at SBG on the Long Mile Road, he was working tirelessly every day on his grappling, which was improving rapidly.

  That run of wins earned Conor a five-fight contract from Cage Warriors. After the disappointment of his first fight for the promotion, he had an opportunity to make amends in September 2011. We were off to Amman in Jordan for Cage Warriors Fight Night 2 to face Niklas Bäckström, an undefeated fighter from Sweden who had built up a big reputation. Aisling Daly and Cathal Pendred were also on the card.

  Four days before fight night, we landed in Amman. When I stepped off the plane there was a message on my phone advising us of a change in circumstances. Bäckström was out. Apparently he had fallen and broke his arm while running to catch a train to the airport. Instead there was an option of a lightweight fight against a Norwegian guy, Aaron Jahnsen, who was willing to step in at late notice. ‘No problem whatsoever,’ was our response. It was a taste of what was to come for Conor, because he’d soon become accustomed to having his opponents withdraw from fights.

  I’ve always told my fighters to never get too hung up on who they’re fighting because you’re never guaranteed anything until you’re facing each other across the cage on fight night. Sometimes, after two or three changes of opponent, a frustrated fighter has come into my office to say they don’t want to take the fight any more because there’s been too much messing around. I could never understand that outlook. Your opponent will always be a human being who weighs about the same as you, with a head, two arms and two legs. I recall the build-up to one of my own fights when the promoter kept ringing me to let me know about one change of opponent after another. In the end I just asked him to stop calling me.

  ‘I’ll be there on the night,’ I said. ‘As long as there’s an opponent in there with me, that’s all I need to know.’

  That’s an attitude I’ve passed down to my fighters, because late pull-outs are a part of the game that you just have to get used to. Our philosophy is that there is no opponent because we can only control our own actions, so let’s just get on with it. If an opponent is particularly adept in one area, of course you can ensure that you’re ready for that. But spending time obsessing over it is likely to be detrimental to your own preparations.

  The main benefit that Conor took from the late change of opponent was that he was already almost on weight by the time we arrived in Jordan. Having been preparing for a 145lb bout, he was now competing at 155lb instead. Things weren’t so straightforward for his opponent, who had eighteen pounds to cut due to the late call-up. Conor got quite a kick out of the fact that he was relaxing in the sunshine on the morning of the weigh-ins, while Aaron Jahnsen ran laps of the pool while wearing a sauna suit in order to shed the weight.

  ‘Look at your man,’ Conor laughed. ‘Will I ask him to run over there and get me a nice glass of iced water with a little umbrella in it?’

  But we certainly weren’t taking Jahnsen lightly. He was a big, intimidating, tough-as-nails Nordic guy who made Conor look quite small. And on fight night, he got the crowd on his side by holding a Jordanian flag aloft as he walked to the cage.

  This was undoubtedly the biggest occasion of Conor’s career so far. The fight was taking place in front of a couple of thousand people in a brand-new arena on the other side of the world, and it was being televised live back in Ireland on Setanta Sports. There was pressure on him to deliver too, given that his last Cage Warriors fight ended in defeat. But the pressure was no issue – it barely registered. As an ambitious young fighter, this was exactly the type of environment Conor wanted to be in.

  Aaron Jahnsen’s grappling was his greatest strength, but I had no concerns about Conor’s ability to handle it. I had seen how hard he had worked since losing to Joseph Duffy and I knew how much he had changed. In the Duffy fight, he was leaping in with big shots and there was a sense of panic when he was taken down. He just wasn’t comfortable. The fight with Jahnsen was in stark contrast. Conor was in no hurry. Relaxed and composed, he was enjoying being in there. Savouring the experience.

  Jahnsen did everything you’d want from a guy fighting Conor McGregor. He threw some good right high-kicks, which are often dangerous for a southpaw boxer like Conor, but they made no impact. He also had a good clinch game and made some powerful takedown attempts, but all of that was nullified with ease. Jahnsen was a tough opponent with a significant size advantage, but Conor made it look straightforward with a first-round TKO.

  That performance showed how much Conor had matured in the space of less than a year, and offered an early glimpse of the fighter he would gradually develop into. He was much more patient when firing off his strikes, whereas previously he had almost seemed to be in a hurry. The improvements in his grappling were also on display. He looked relaxed in successfully defending against a big takedown attempt after just thirty seconds. Conor stayed on his feet as Jahnsen drove him back against the cage. They clinched and Conor handled it comfortably, without any sense of panic which may have been there in a similar scenario before. He put into practice what he’d been doing in the gym so there was no need to be concerned. He knew what to do. His opponent was tough, but Cono
r made it look straightforward. After taking some big punches, Jahnsen covered up as Conor unloaded and the stoppage came after three minutes and twenty-nine seconds of the first round.

  Conor was becoming a more refined MMA fighter, displaying a wide range of skills. He was no longer relying solely on that left hand. There was no magic potion or secret recipe. The giant strides he was making were down to hard work and nothing else. Conor was doing the right things in the right way in the gym, and he was being rewarded for it in the cage.

  As an MMA coach, training your fighters to compete isn’t your only duty. Far from it. There’s a lot of responsibility on your shoulders in the role. One of your many jobs is to act as a babysitter, which I’ve had to do several times over the years. One of those occasions was in Jordan for Cage Warriors Fight Night 2.

  Conor McGregor had never fought outside of Ireland before, and Cathal Pendred (who drew his fight against Danny Mitchell) had never competed further afield than Britain, so the whole experience was a big deal for them. After being flown halfway across the world to a plush hotel, the lads wanted to make sure they made the most of the hospitality. (Aisling Daly – who needed a mere twenty seconds to submit Angela Hayes – had already fought twice in the US, and was a bit less giddy about the whole thing.) As soon as the weigh-ins were out of the way, Conor and Cathal kept the restaurant staff on their toes with their room-service requests. They then spent the day after the fight sampling the contents of the cocktail menu by the pool.