Having to do so was a massive blow, but something good came from the setback: the incident convinced Conor and Artem that trying to take each other’s heads off in training wasn’t the wisest course of action. In any combat sports gym, there are going to be elevated levels of sparring every once in a while. You’re talking mostly about alpha males in their twenties and thirties, so sometimes things get a bit out of control.
I’m strongly opposed to teammates competing against each other in training, whereas I know in some gyms that it’s almost encouraged. In a lot of those gyms it’s about whittling down the numbers, so that they’re left with five or six guys who are able to beat up everybody else.
Take the ‘Doghouse’ sparring sessions they do at Floyd Mayweather’s gym, for example. That involves two guys in a full-on fight in the gym until one of them quits. I’ve watched some footage of that and it almost made me sick. It’s irresponsible and moronic. The environment Mayweather has created is undoubtedly going to produce one or two amazing guys, because you obviously need an incredible amount of physical and mental toughness to get through something like that. However, the number of people who are risking significant head trauma from that kind of a set-up would keep me awake at night. The TV cameras should follow those guys to find out about their stories, because I can guarantee that they don’t have happy endings. I want every experience at my gym to be positive. That’s not going to happen if you’re knocked out by a teammate at the end of a continuous thirty-minute round.
There have been many occasions over the years when I’ve sat down with fighters in my office and said: ‘You’ve got to start taking it easy. You prepare for fights in this gym. You don’t win them here. The gym is a place for improvement.’
At first they’re confused. Their philosophy is the harder you spar, the more prepared you are when the time comes to fight. In reality, though, if a fighter is holding nothing back in sparring for six to eight weeks, the likelihood is that they won’t even make it as far as the fight. Communicating that message to them is important to me, because it’s a mistake I made many times myself.
During my fighting career, there wasn’t really a distinction between a sparring session and a fight. You approached both in the very same manner. You gave it all you had and that’s how things were done in every gym. For a long time, that’s also how I ran things as a coach. But I’m an evidence-based guy and the evidence told me that even when fighters managed to make it through a full training camp while sparring like that, their bodies had been beaten up before the time came to compete for real, so they weren’t operating at their best. If they weren’t injured, they were completely worn out.
It seemed to me that there had to be a better way of doing things. I bounced some ideas off Matt Thornton, the founder of Straight Blast Gym in the US, and decided to introduce the very simple concept of lowering the contact but keeping the training as realistic as possible. You want to recreate a fight scenario as closely as you can, but you do so without the same level of impact. Throw your big shots but pull them before they connect.
We call this ‘flow sparring’. It requires experience and intelligence on the part of both athletes involved. If you’re standing over someone who’s on their back and you’re throwing these big shots, the other person can’t simply ignore the strikes just because they’re not really being hit. They might be tempted to work for a leg-lock while you’re throwing your shots, but they have to respect the fact that you’re in control and those shots wouldn’t allow them to set up that leg-lock in a fight situation. Otherwise you’ll end up with the guy who’s in control being unfairly submitted because their sparring partner refuses to acknowledge the strikes. You’ll have two guys claiming ‘I got you first!’ and it complicates the entire process. Next time, the guy might actually decide to land his shots properly.
For sparring sessions, I like to replicate every aspect of a fight without the damage. Therefore, if fighters can master the concept of flow sparring, they don’t need to wear any additional protection. They can spar using four-ounce gloves, which they’ll be wearing in a fight. I even encourage them to wear the same shorts. Every detail is important.
I can recall wearing a T-shirt during every training session while I prepared for one of my very first fights. When it was time to fight and I suddenly had no T-shirt on, it actually threw me off. It didn’t feel familiar because that’s not how I had prepared. So if my fighters are sparring without tops on and they’re complaining that it’s too slippy and awkward, I just remind them that it’s exactly how it’ll be on fight night. Add in a little blood and it becomes even trickier. Karl Tanswell at SBG in Manchester sometimes even uses theatrical blood in sparring sessions to get his guys used to that. If there’s blood flowing during a fight, they’re already accustomed to it. It’s about creating an environment in the gym that resembles a fight in every respect, with the exception of force and power.
It took me a couple of years to introduce this way of thinking as the norm in the gym, but it’s now widely accepted as the most productive method of training. Ironically, Conor and Artem have probably become its two biggest advocates. We refer to it as ‘updating the software without damaging the hardware’. My fighters can still train hard but there’s no need to take unnecessary damage while they do so.
We saw significant results from this change in approach very quickly. In the last few years, I can’t imagine that any other team can rival our track record for the lowest number of pull-outs from fights at all levels, from the UFC down to the domestic circuit. I’m not suggesting that we’re the only team who train this way, but it’s not something I see in a lot of other gyms.
Conor McGregor’s fight against Jim Alers was rescheduled to take place at Cage Warriors 51, at The Helix on New Year’s Eve. For a change of scenery and to freshen things up, we decided to move our training camp to Iceland. However, with about five weeks to go, the fight fell through again. This time it was Alers who had pulled out. Conscious of the fact that it had now been six months since Conor last competed, I spoke to the organization to see if an alternative bout could be arranged. I was aware that Cage Warriors were trying to put a lightweight title fight on the same card. The belt was vacant and a Slovakian fighter, Ivan Buchinger, had been handed a shot. But his original opponent had backed out. With both Conor and Buchinger in need of opponents, I suggested a match-up between the pair of them for the lightweight title. The proposal was given the green light and Conor was pleased. Now, fighting at 155lb instead of 145lb, he could enjoy a much bigger Christmas dinner the week before the fight. It was also a chance for him to become the first fighter to be the champion of two unified weight classes in Cage Warriors simultaneously.
I’ve always been confident before Conor’s fights, but I was particularly so in this case. For the first time, I felt he wasn’t going to be facing a guy whose sole intention was to take him down. Having looked at Buchinger’s previous fights, I expected this to be a kick-boxing match. Without having to be too concerned about the threat of a takedown, that would give Conor the freedom to truly express just how spectacularly diverse his striking skills are. In his other fights, Conor’s opponents always tried to grapple with him, so things often became scrappy. But this was a fight I was certain would stay on the feet and, from a spectator’s perspective, that excited me.
It was another memorable night at The Helix, just as it had been the previous June for Cage Warriors 47, as we rang in 2013 by adding another Cage Warriors title to the SBG mantelpiece. Conor put on an exhibition of striking, an absolute masterclass, as he knocked out Buchinger with a stunning slip-counter-left-hook after three minutes forty of the first round.
As Conor walked back to the changing room after the fight with a Cage Warriors belt draped over each of his shoulders, I felt certain that the next time he entered the cage it would be for his UFC debut.
9
I was in Iceland helping Gunnar Nelson to prepare for his second UFC bout when I received a couple of
interesting phone calls.
It was 3 February 2013. Gunni was scheduled to face Jorge Santiago in London a fortnight later, so we were in the final stages of his training camp.
The first call that morning was from the gym back in Dublin, informing me that Conor McGregor hadn’t shown up to coach his striking class the night before. That didn’t come as a huge surprise to me.
On the surface, everything was going great for Conor. He held two Cage Warriors belts. The video of his KO of Buchinger had gone viral and everybody seemed to want a piece of him. Some of the biggest names in the sport, including UFC commentator Joe Rogan, had reached out to Conor via social media on New Year’s Day to let him know how impressed they were.
‘I just caught your fight, Conor,’ Rogan tweeted. ‘Congratulations, you looked sensational! Hope to see you in the UFC someday. Best of luck!’
We were inundated with interview requests from MMA media. Even the mainstream press in Ireland, which hadn’t yet really embraced MMA, were finally beginning to show some interest in the guy from Dublin who was being hailed as a potential UFC star of the future.
Conor was eager for his chance to prove himself in the UFC. It was the only place where his career as a full-time fighter could be financially viable. His teammate Gunni Nelson was preparing for another outing on the biggest stage in the world, having earned $16,000 for his UFC debut a few months earlier – over six times what Conor had been paid for his last fight. All the while, Conor was broke, and relying on Dee, his girlfriend, to get him from A to B in her old Peugeot, which needed to be push-started. As the weeks passed by without a call from the UFC, Conor was losing hope. Dismayed and disillusioned, he started to wonder if there was any point in going on. It didn’t help that his coach was in Iceland. Conor was beginning to drift.
The second call I received that day put paid to any thoughts Conor might be having of throwing in the towel. I was eating dinner at a restaurant in Reykjavik when my phone rang. It was Halli Nelson, Gunni’s father. While I was helping his son prepare for his next UFC fight, Halli was helping me with management duties related to Conor. Double-jobbing as Conor’s coach and manager was becoming increasingly difficult, now that Conor was in such demand.
‘I’ve been speaking to Sean Shelby about Conor,’ Halli said.
I liked the sound of that. Sean Shelby was the UFC matchmaker. ‘They’re offering him a place on their card in Sweden on 6 April. It’s for $8,000 plus an additional $8,000 to win. Are you happy to accept that?’
‘Hang on, Halli,’ I said. ‘Are you telling me the UFC are offering Conor a fight?’
‘Yes. So, are you interested?’
‘Of course we’re interested! It’s the UFC. We’re in, no doubt about it. It doesn’t matter how much money they’re offering.’
I was so keen to tell Conor the news that I hung up on Halli without asking for any other details, such as who the opponent was going to be. I dashed out of the restaurant, into the snow, and dialled Conor’s number.
No answer. I tried again. And again. And again. It then dawned on me that Conor was probably avoiding me. He would have been expecting a bollocking for not showing up to coach his class. But I kept calling and finally Conor answered.
‘Look, John, I’m sorry I didn’t take the class last night but –’
‘Conor, just shut up and listen! How would you like to fight for the UFC in April?’
‘Are you serious? Fucking hell, let’s do it!’
The timing of Conor’s UFC call-up couldn’t have been any better. If he had drifted any longer, he might have ended up passing the point of no return. Instead, Conor immediately began the preparations for his UFC debut.
SBG Ireland received a couple of significant boosts during his training camp. Gunni Nelson picked up another UFC win before Cathal Pendred dethroned Gael Grimaud to become the Cage Warriors welterweight champion. In the space of nine months, SBG had won all four Cage Warriors titles from featherweight to middleweight.
It was only when news of Conor’s UFC contract broke in the media that I learned his opponent would be Marcus Brimage. He was an American guy who had already gone 3–0 in the UFC, so on paper it was a tough task for Conor. But fights aren’t contested on paper. I didn’t know anything about Brimage and I didn’t look into him in any great detail either. What I did know was that when Conor faced him in the octagon, the world was going to be blown away. With his range of skills, Conor was going to bring something completely different to the table. Even though Conor hadn’t yet made his UFC debut, I already felt that there was nobody there capable of troubling him outside of the top five guys. And since this guy was still on the preliminary card in his fourth UFC fight, I had no concerns about him at all. In my view, most of the guys on UFC prelims were a level below the likes of Ivan Buchinger and Dave Hill anyway, so this wasn’t a step up for Conor, despite how it was being billed by fans and the media. All I had ever wanted was for him to get one shot on this stage to show the world what he was capable of. Now that the opportunity had finally arrived, there was almost a sense of relief. We felt we had already completed the toughest part of the journey – getting to the UFC.
Following Conor’s Cage Warriors exploits, both in the cage and in interviews, there was a lot of excitement among the MMA community as the fight approached. It peaked during an interview with well-known reporter Ariel Helwani live on his show, The MMA Hour. Conor had never been exposed to such a large audience, particularly in North America, so it was going to be intriguing to see how it all unfolded. His charisma and sense of humour had already made him popular with fans in Ireland and the UK, but would that also translate across the Atlantic?
I watched the interview and what I saw was Conor just being Conor – no act, no gimmick, what you see is what you get – so I wasn’t anticipating the incredible reaction that followed. The internet exploded. I really didn’t expect people to be so captivated by him. They thought he was hilarious and were intrigued by his confidence. I already knew he had the ability to fight his way to the top, but as I observed how people were so taken by his personality, I thought: This isn’t going to do any harm at all. From there, the media couldn’t get enough of him.
Conor was also keen to point out that this wasn’t just about him: ‘When I get to the UFC, I’m going to kick the door down for my teammates to follow. We’re going to take over.’
Conor may have been the one garnering all the attention, but helping his friends in the gym to realize their dreams was just as important to him as his own success.
Conor’s UFC debut was set to take place on Saturday, 6 April 2013, at the 16,000-capacity Ericsson Globe Arena in Stockholm. Conor and I left Dublin on the Tuesday morning before the fight. His clash with Marcus Brimage was buried deep down in the prelims of the thirteen-bout fight card, but it was being billed as ‘The People’s Main Event’. I met Conor at his family home in Lucan, where I had organized a little surprise for him. We had spent most of his training camp in Iceland – a place where Conor and other SBG fighters could prepare away from the distractions of family and friends – and in the evenings we watched episodes of the Irish crime drama series Love/Hate. Before we headed for the airport that morning, I managed to arrange for Peter Coonan, who plays the role of Franno in the show, to pay Conor a visit. Peter came in to wish Conor all the best. Conor obviously wasn’t expecting it, and it gave him a nice little boost before we left.
We were actually cutting it tight if we wanted to make the flight – Conor was running behind schedule, as usual – so we quickly hopped into Dee’s Peugeot and she eventually managed to get it started. As we were pulling away from the house, Conor asked Dee to stop at the post office in Lucan.
‘I need to go in and collect my dole,’ he said. Conor was getting €188 per week in unemployment benefit.
‘Conor, I can loan you the money,’ I said. ‘We haven’t got time.’
But Conor insisted on stopping. For weeks leading up to the fight, he had been all over Iri
sh TV, radio, websites and newspapers, as they reported on the much-hyped young Dubliner who was aiming to become the first Irishman to win in the UFC. Yet here he was, queuing up in his local post office en route to his UFC debut, waiting to collect the €188 that he couldn’t afford to be without. While I was panicking in the car, certain that we were going to miss the flight, the other people in the queue were asking Conor for photos and autographs. Thankfully, we just made it to the airport on time.
When we arrived in Stockholm I was surprised to bump into a familiar face. Back in 2003, just after Matt Thornton welcomed me into the Straight Blast Gym family, I had to travel to Oregon in order to attain my SBG instructor’s certificate. Part of that process involved a fight in the gym, in which my opponent was a guy called Chris Connelly. We had a good scrap but I never saw Chris again … until I was passing through the lobby of the hotel in Stockholm. I knew Chris had previously coached Marcus Brimage in Alabama, but Brimage had since moved to American Top Team in Florida, so it never occurred to me that Chris might be in his corner for the fight. It was good to see him after such a long time. Given that we were about to be on opposite sides once again, we had a quick chat and agreed to put friendship aside until after the fight, when we’d have a proper catch-up over a beer. We left it at that, but there were still some awkward moments around the hotel as the week went on. That’s the nature of MMA: while the sport has grown significantly in recent years, it’s still quite a small community. I’ve become well accustomed to ensuring that competitive rivalries don’t get in the way of friendships.
Win or Learn: MMA, Conor McGregor and Me: A Trainer's Journey Page 9