Cathal bided his time in that second round, before scoring a takedown, taking his opponent’s back and submitting him via rear naked choke. Given that it was his lack of a track record for finishing his opponents that had prevented Cathal from earning a UFC contract previously, it was very satisfying to see him win his debut via submission. Not for the first time, Cathal was rewarded for his determination and relentlessness. As he soaked in the adulation of an ecstatic crowd, I couldn’t have been happier for him. Nobody deserved it more.
That win over Mike King must surely go down as one of the most profitable debuts in UFC history. Cathal earned $8,000 to fight plus another $8,000 for winning. On top of that, both he and Mike King picked up an additional $50,000 each as a ‘Fight of the Night’ bonus. It didn’t stop there for Cathal. A few weeks later, the UFC revealed that King had tested positive for performance-enhancing drugs, so he was stripped of his bonus and the money was surrendered to Cathal. The most important win of his career – against a guy who was bigger and on steroids – and $116,000 in the kitty? I’d call that a pretty good start to life in the UFC.
Soon afterwards, Cathal repaid me the €1,000 I’d loaned him to go to The Ultimate Fighter – with significant interest.
‘Thanks for believing in me, coach,’ he said. ‘That was a wise investment you made.’
My next duty at UFC Fight Night 46 was to coach Gunnar Nelson in the co-main event against Zak Cummings. Gunni had been training intermittently at SBG for years so the Irish fans already knew that he was worthy of their support, but this was a turning point. This was a night when they truly embraced him as one of their own. Dublin had been his second home for a long time, and it was great to see how the fans got behind him so passionately. He was blown away by the reception, and for the first time ever I saw him display some emotion around a fight.
As for the fight itself, it was classic Gunnar Nelson. A mature, patient build-up, followed by slick jiu-jitsu and a beautiful submission which came near the end of the second round, as Gunni moved one step closer to becoming a title contender.
Finally, the main event. The walk from the changing room to the octagon with Conor McGregor for his fight against Diego Brandão will go to my grave with me. To the Irish people, Conor was no longer just a sportsman. He was an icon. A symbol of national pride. The walk-out was proof of that. In such a scenario, the noise is so loud that your ears don’t even hear it any more. It’s a very strange feeling. You know you’re being engulfed by thousands of screams but it’s somehow still peaceful. For a long time, MMA fans in Ireland had been waiting for the chance to shout for one of their own on the biggest stage. Now that the time had come, they were making the most of it. The noise during Conor’s introduction was like nothing I had ever heard before. It was officially registered as 111 decibels – louder than the sound of a jet taking off.
When the contest began, Conor looked superb. It was as if the injury had never occurred. Brandão sought to use his jiu-jitsu, but Conor had little difficulty in subduing that threat. When his left hand came into play, it was game over for Brandão. Just over four minutes into the fight, Conor had made a winning return from injury, dropping Brandão with a punch before swallowing him up on the ground for a first-round TKO.
‘I said I was going to put him away in the first round and I put him away in the first round,’ Conor said afterwards. ‘It would have to be something special to come over here to my home town and take this away from me. There’s not a man alive who can come on this soil and beat me. I said it last year: We’re not here just to take part. We’re here to take over.’
Even though we’ve had plenty of great nights since then, and I know there are a lot more still to come, I still sometimes daydream and wish I could transport myself back to that night just to experience it all again. It was absolutely amazing.
After each of our fights I made a beeline for my parents and enjoyed a brief moment of celebration with them. Four fights, four victories. That day when I brought them to see The Shed and my mam was in tears seemed like a distant memory now. In many ways, as someone pointed out to me afterwards, the entire event – enormous as it was – had grown from what I had started in that tiny shed thirteen years earlier. My parents were so proud.
When the people around them in the crowd saw me with my mam and dad, they’d ask them: ‘How do you know John?’ After they told them who they were, fans were asking for selfies; and at the end of the night, my mam and dad were nearly carried out of the arena on the shoulders of the crowd. My father told me it was the proudest day of his life. I really can’t put into words how important that was for me. Having had a rocky relationship with him when I was growing up, receiving that level of approval from my dad meant more to me than I could ever explain. Every son probably craves his father’s approval. Now, I finally felt like I had it. If I had become the best engineer in the world, it could never have had the same impact as this.
After the fight, Conor went out of his way to thank me publicly: ‘John has changed our lives. He’s been an inspiration to us all. He is a master of human movement. He’s a genius at this game.’
It was kind of funny that he said I was changing my fighters’ lives, because the way I saw it was that they were changing mine. I guess that’s when you know you’re doing things right as a team.
13
If I seemed particularly upbeat around the time of that UFC event in Dublin, it was not solely because things were going well for the team. It was also around that time that I realized I had met the woman I wanted to spend the rest of my life with. Three days after the UFC event, I’d asked that woman to marry me – not a bad week.
As you might expect, I get a lot of social media and e-mail messages from people enquiring about taking up martial arts. One message I received in July 2013 was from a girl from Belfast who was interested in doing kick-boxing lessons. I recommended that she check out Jamie Crawford, a good friend of mine up there who’s an excellent Muay Thai and kick-boxing guy. I usually leave it at that when somebody contacts me looking for that kind of information, because I don’t have the time to strike up friendly conversations with everybody, but for some reason, when the girl from Belfast replied, I wrote back. She replied, then I replied again, and so on. That went on for quite a while and developed into a regular correspondence that lasted a few weeks. We shared the same sense of humour and just clicked right away.
At the end of July she hopped on a train down to Dublin and I went to Connolly Station to pick her up. That was the first time I met Orlagh Hunter. I brought her to Pintxo’s in Temple Bar, one of my favourite tapas places, and we’ve been together ever since. In June of the following year, after finishing university, she relocated to Dublin and moved in with me.
Orlagh is a massive sports fan with an encyclopaedic knowledge, particularly when it comes to football. She played from a young age and is a big Liverpool fan. When I introduced her to my parents, my dad was delighted: a stunningly beautiful Liverpool supporter who could spend hours talking about football! In his eyes I had met the perfect woman. When we go to meet up with my family on Sundays down at our local pub, Orlagh and my dad will be there yapping on about some game that was on the day before or earlier that afternoon. They could be speaking a different language for all I know. Thankfully for me, she has a similar passion for mixed martial arts. When one of my fighters has an opponent confirmed for their next bout, Orlagh will often be the one giving me the lowdown.
Given how rapidly things had grown at the gym, I needed extra help, and Orlagh began working there full-time after moving to Dublin. We share an office and she takes care of all the membership enquiries and logistical stuff like that, which removes a massive weight from my shoulders. We’re in each other’s company all day, every day, and I think it takes a special kind of relationship to make that work. But Orlagh’s my best friend and I wouldn’t have it any other way. She was actually born on 12 November 1991 – exactly two years to the day before the first ever UFC event
took place. It’s fitting that the true loves of my personal and professional lives share the same birthday.
Gunnar Nelson’s win in Dublin was his fourth in the UFC. He was now ranked twelfth in the welterweight division and people were finally beginning to regard him as a legitimate contender.
Eleven weeks after the event in Dublin, the UFC had a big show scheduled for Stockholm. They needed a headliner and, as a popular Nordic fighter who was rapidly on the rise, Gunni was the man for the job. Just over a fortnight after he overcame Zak Cummings, the UFC announced a main event between Gunnar Nelson and Rick Story for UFC Fight Night 53 on 4 October 2014. Story was going to be Gunni’s most experienced and highly regarded opponent to date.
It was going to be SBG’s second UFC main event in the space of just a few months. Even better, we had fighters competing on separate UFC cards that night in two different parts of the world. Just a couple of hours after the Stockholm event, Paddy Holohan was set to compete at UFC Fight Night 54 in Canada. Unfortunately we haven’t mastered human cloning yet, so I couldn’t be in Paddy’s corner in Nova Scotia. Artem Lobov and Ais Daly were with Paddy instead. With Cathal Pendred also on the Stockholm card, we were aiming to secure three victories in two different places in one night.
For obvious reasons, people usually seem to associate me most with my Irish fighters. However, I’ve always been closest socially to Gunnar Nelson. Having been with him from such a young age, there’s been a very strong friendship between us. He’s renowned for never showing any emotion but I can always tell if something’s not right with him.
With a lot of momentum behind him and being at the top of the card, the spotlight was on Gunni in a big way during the build-up to that fight. There was much more publicity than he was used to, but he seemed to take it all in his stride. Going into the fight, everything seemed fine. We had a huge amount of respect for Rick Story, who is a great professional and a very dangerous opponent, but I was very confident. Story had previously struggled against top jiu-jitsu guys – Demian Maia ran through him a couple of years earlier – so I felt this would be an ideal opportunity for Gunni to showcase the extent of his ability. I was convinced that he would get the win and make a statement.
But that feeling suddenly changed when we began to go through the pre-fight warm-up. Gunni is probably my only UFC fighter who I still warm up personally. I certainly don’t do it with Conor any more, after he chipped one of my teeth before one of his early fights. I leave that to people who enjoy being punched in the face, like Artem Lobov.
As I helped Gunni to prepare, there was a deadness to him that I had never noticed before in all my years of training him. He was completely flat and breathing heavily.
‘Gunni, are you okay?’ I asked.
‘Yeah, I’m good,’ was his unconvincing response. But I could tell that he wasn’t there. I knew Gunnar Nelson better than any fighter I’ve ever worked with and this wasn’t him.
It was time to walk to the octagon for Gunni’s first UFC main event and we were in trouble. I could sense it. To the naked eye, Gunni looked the same as he always did: relaxed and showing no emotion. As Dan Hardy said in his commentary when the fight was about to begin: ‘You wouldn’t know it was the main event. Gunnar Nelson standing in his corner, he looks like he’s waiting for a bus.’
His demeanour may have been the same as it always was, but the performance that followed was nothing like Gunni. He actually started well and looked lively early on. Just under two minutes in, he took Story down with a beautiful inside trip. But then the alarm bells began to ring. Within seconds, Story was back on his feet. I had never seen anybody do that to Gunni, either in the gym or in a fight. Gunni usually just needs one takedown, then it’s game over. And that’s how it should be.
When Rick Story scrambled back to his feet almost immediately after Gunni got that first takedown, it confirmed my feeling that Gunni wasn’t himself. He actually hit his opponent with some really heavy shots, but Story just kept coming forward and putting the pressure on, like the tough bastard that he is. By the end of the second round, Gunni’s tank was almost completely empty. What could we do? I knew Story wouldn’t submit him, but I was worried that Gunni might get knocked out. I just wanted him to make it to the finish line, but I wasn’t sure if he had enough energy left. I kept a very close eye on him as the fight progressed, and I’ve never been so close to literally throwing in the towel on a fighter’s behalf.
After the fight, I received a lot of criticism for the advice I gave to Gunni at the end of the fourth and heading into the fifth and final round.
‘Five minutes left. Last round … and recover. Last round. All you’ve got to do is do what you’ve been doing for the last few rounds. When he skips in, just put those hands up. He knows he’s losing the decision so he’s going to go wild with his hands in this round.’
I knew my comments would be picked up on the TV broadcast and that I’d probably be slated for them. Of course I didn’t believe Gunni was winning the fight. As far as I was concerned, the fight had already been lost. My priority at that stage was just for him to get through it without being finished, which was why my advice was geared towards encouraging him to play it safe and be careful. That was the best we could hope for now. There was no point in having him risk taking extra damage in pursuit of a finish that he was not capable of getting. As a coach, you have to weigh up what you’d like to see happen versus what you believe the fighter can manage to do. I believed he could last five more minutes of running out the clock for a decision loss. Then we could get out of there and find out what had been the problem. A five-round fight is no joke. I had to take my hat off to Rick Story because he came in and looked much better prepared than he had done for his previous fights. Gunni had prepared well too, but something was obviously amiss.
After the fight, people kept asking me why I didn’t tell Gunni to shoot for a takedown going into the fifth round – as if just saying it could have made it happen. This isn’t a video game, it’s real-life competition against the best fighters in the world. I could see what other people couldn’t. Gunni didn’t have a takedown left in him because he was absolutely exhausted.
He lost a decision on scores of 50–44, 49–46, 47–48 – oddly, one of the judges had it in Gunni’s favour, but even we couldn’t agree with that.
Gunni’s reaction was the same as it always was. This was the first defeat of his career but, as is the case when he wins, all he was concerned about was getting some food and some rest.
Earlier that night, Cathal Pendred had won a decision against Gasan Umalatov, in spite of a below-par performance. And later that night, in Nova Scotia, Paddy Holohan lost a decision to Chris Kelades. It wasn’t our most memorable or successful night but, as always, we took plenty of lessons away from it.
Later, when we sat down to discuss what had gone wrong with Gunni, he admitted that his head wasn’t in the right place beforehand as he had been dealing with a personal issue. He’d tried to shake it off and put it to the back of his mind for the sake of the fight, but clearly he hadn’t been able to do so and it had had a detrimental impact on his performance.
Professional athletes’ personal lives are very rarely taken into account by the audience in the event of a defeat or a bad performance. The fans expect to see the best version of their favourite athlete or team every time they compete. It doesn’t enter their minds that those involved may be enduring difficult times in their private lives, just as anybody can. They expect them to operate on autopilot every single time, but it’s much more complicated than that. If you’re having a bad day in the office because of a personal issue, you can probably get away with it and come back the next day in better form without anyone noticing. But when your workplace is being scrutinized by a global audience of millions, it’s not quite so easy to disguise.
Not even a day had passed since the defeat of Diego Brandão before Conor began to hound the UFC about setting up his next fight. Having been out of action for so
long owing to the knee injury, Conor felt eager to catch up on lost time and he didn’t want to wait too long for his next chance to compete. He has always been driven by competition and he was desperate to get back in there. Dana White was bombarded with text messages, with Conor offering to take any fight from featherweight to welterweight at the drop of a hat. The messages stopped when we were contacted with details of Conor’s next assignment just three days after he had beaten Brandão. After that fight in Dublin, Dana had said that Conor’s next fight was likely to be in Las Vegas. The UFC knew they needed to bring him to the fight capital of the world and the home of their biggest pay-per-view events. It would be there, at UFC 178 at the famous MGM Grand Garden Arena on 27 September, that he would face his highest-ranked opponent yet.
Dustin Poirier was fifth in the featherweight division, while Conor had moved up to ninth. Although Poirier was six months younger than Conor, the American fighter was much more experienced, with ten fights in the UFC already under his belt, compared to Conor’s three. By now it was becoming a recurring theme that Conor’s next opponent was being billed as the guy who would prove to be a step too far for him, and although Poirier was definitely the most experienced one yet, I genuinely had no concerns. In fact, I thought he was less dangerous than Brandão and I was supremely confident about the fight. Poirier is a good fighter, don’t get me wrong, but he had been around for a while and been through many wars, and he seemed like the kind of guy who had left his best fights in the gym.
Win or Learn: MMA, Conor McGregor and Me: A Trainer's Journey Page 14