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

by John Kavanagh

  He may have had the better of the first round, but that counts for little if you can’t even make it as far as the end of the second. When Chael Sonnen outwrestled Anderson Silva for four rounds in 2010, I don’t recall anybody claiming that it diluted the significance of Anderson’s victory, which came via submission in the fifth and final round. In fact, Silva was praised for having the ability to dig out a seemingly unlikely win.

  As for the criticism of referee Herb Dean stopping the fight with just three seconds of the second round remaining, it’s worth noting that there wasn’t a single complaint about that from Chad Mendes. I’m sure he was grateful to Herb for intervening and preventing him from taking any further punches while he was clearly concussed.

  After the fight, there were claims that Conor’s lack of grappling ability had been exposed. Sure, he had given up a few takedowns, but he actually withstood more takedown attempts than he conceded. And even when he was taken down, he was doing damage from the bottom.

  Still, the questions and criticism kept on coming. A lot of people were extremely reluctant to admit that he was winning simply because he was a great fighter. I soon realized that this was no bad thing. As long as there are questions to be answered, there’ll be big fights to be made. Can he beat a wrestler on a full training camp? Can he beat a champion? Can he beat a champion in a heavier weight class?

  Questions are good for business. If questions aren’t being asked, people will be less interested to see him fight. Critics may never run out of questions, but we’ll do our utmost to answer as many of them as we can.

  In an ideal world, Conor would have taken some time off after his win against Mendes. After returning from the injury he sustained against Max Holloway, he fought three times in six months to seal his title shot and then went straight into a hectic promotional tour for UFC 189, before embarking on a challenging training camp while dealing with a knee problem and the change of opponent. It had been draining for us all, but especially for Conor. I felt he could have done with a holiday. However, lying on a beach for a week is not his style.

  Shortly before the Mendes fight, Conor had agreed to be a coach on a series of The Ultimate Fighter. It required an additional six weeks in Las Vegas, during which he would guide a team of up-and-coming European fighters against their counterparts from the USA, who were under the stewardship of Urijah Faber. Filming was scheduled to begin just a few days after UFC 189, so Conor was heading straight from one big commitment to the next without taking a break. I was concerned that he might be pushing himself too far, but I also understood him well enough by now to know that his mind always needs to be occupied: he gets bored on the rare occasions that he takes even a couple of days off. Perhaps this was going to be the perfect solution. It was six weeks of work, but he was observing fights and training sessions instead of taking part.

  The day before filming began, he tried to back out of it. At that stage he just wanted to come home. The only thing that convinced him to go ahead was that Artem Lobov was involved. Artem had been striving to earn a UFC contract for a long time and, unlike many other fighters, he refused to take the easy route to the top. He regularly took fights at short notice against top opponents, competing from featherweight to welterweight. He took risks and they didn’t always pay off. That left him with as many losses on his record as wins, but there was no doubt in my mind that he was good enough to compete in the UFC. He just needed an opportunity to prove it. That finally came when he was selected for The Ultimate Fighter after impressing at the tryouts.

  In order to secure a place in the show for the duration of the series, fighters are first required to come through a preliminary fight against a fellow contestant. Artem’s fight was scheduled to take place on the Wednesday after Conor had beaten Mendes. As always, Artem had played an important role in Conor’s training camp, so the plan for him once UFC 189 had finished was to have a massage, get some rest and prepare for what was likely to be the most important fight of his life. But that’s not quite how things played out.

  We all got a bit carried away with the jubilation of Conor’s achievement, and the celebrations went on for a couple of days. Artem was at the heart of it all. He was due to report for TUF filming on the Monday morning, but he woke up late that afternoon nursing a dreadful hangover as a result of a two-day bender. Forty-eight hours from his fight, he could barely get out of bed.

  Artem managed to report to the TUF crew on the Monday evening and spent Tuesday cutting weight. He had been drawn to face Mehdi Baghdad, who was one of the favourites going into the season. Artem was still suffering the effects of the hangover by the time he entered the octagon so he subsequently didn’t show what he was capable of. Mehdi Baghdad won via majority decision and Artem’s dream of earning a UFC contract was seemingly over. He was devastated: it looked like he had blown his chance.

  That’s when Conor’s influence came into play. In spite of the loss, he was able to arrange for Artem to receive a wildcard spot in the competition. It was a second bite at the cherry for Artem and no one was more deserving of that break. He certainly grabbed that opportunity with both hands, picking up three consecutive wins, all by knockout, making him the first fighter to do so in the history of The Ultimate Fighter. Artem eventually lost a decision in a frustrating final fight against Ryan Hall, but it was a case of ‘mission accomplished’ as he had done enough to convince the UFC to offer him a contract.

  I was over the moon for Artem. He’d grown up in Russia, but his family had moved to Ireland when he was a teenager. Artem had never practised any martial arts until he took up self-defence classes at Dublin City University at the age of twenty-one, while studying for a degree in Business Studies and Spanish. That led him to Straight Blast Gym. For a number of months after Artem joined the gym, I actually thought he was Brazilian. I have no idea why. I tried to use my few words of Portuguese with him whenever we spoke, but he just smiled back at me awkwardly. Eventually he corrected me discreetly: ‘Sorry, coach. We speak Russian in Russia, not Portuguese.’

  Watching that season of The Ultimate Fighter, it was particularly intriguing to observe Conor’s approach to coaching other professional fighters. After a couple of days of filming, he sent me a message: ‘I’m glad I went ahead with this. I’m chilling in the gym and watching fights. This is exactly what I want to do every day. It’s perfect.’

  Conor demonstrated the concept of light, flow sparring at an easy pace to the guys on his team and most of them were fascinated by it. Like the majority of fighters, they were only familiar with full-throttle sessions that mimicked a fight. It didn’t surprise me that flow sparring was a completely new idea for so many of them. It’s something I had been preaching for a long time but it was often met with scepticism from outside SBG.

  As for Conor’s overall performance as a coach, I was very impressed. I don’t think his future lies in coaching, but that has nothing to do with his ability to teach. It’s because he’s bloody incapable of showing up for anything on time! When Conor coached striking classes at SBG, he was absolutely excellent. Even nowadays in the gym, he’s always helping his teammates. It comes naturally to him. But if you’re scheduled to teach a 7 p.m. class, you can’t turn up at 9 p.m. and act surprised when you find out that all your students have left. Punctuality is actually a hugely important part of coaching. If people are preparing themselves physically and mentally to train at a certain time, you can’t keep them waiting. Maybe he’ll rectify his poor timekeeping when he gets older and settles down, but it’s hard to picture it now. I’ve worked with him for ten years and he’s never been on time for anything. But if somebody asks Conor a question when he’s on the mat, he could end up spending forty-five minutes explaining the answer. I’ve seen him do that many times in the gym, whether it’s with a beginner or a fellow professional. The ability to teach is definitely there. The ability to arrive early is not. Conor has spent a lot of money on nice watches in the last couple of years. Some day he might actually start using th
em.

  The fight we’d been waiting for, against José Aldo, was set for UFC 194 at the MGM Grand on 12 December. It would be a featherweight title unification bout – the reigning champion versus the interim champion.

  There was universal agreement among Conor, his training partners, the other coaches and myself that while we had achieved the desired result against Chad Mendes, the training camp had been far too long and draining. For the next one, things needed to be different. We decided to scale things back by staying in Dublin until three weeks before the fight.

  A lot had been invested in promoting and preparing for the fight when it was initially booked for July, so part of me wondered if we were about to go through all of that for a second time only for it to be postponed again. We were well accustomed to opponents pulling out, but this was different – this was Aldo, the long-time champion. We really, really wanted this fight.

  When people referred to Conor as the ‘interim’ champion, he didn’t like it. His view was that Aldo had gone running when the time came to fight, which made him the new champion. But Conor knew, as did everyone, that he couldn’t legitimately claim to be the best featherweight in the world without beating José Aldo. Even if Aldo had been stripped of the belt and Conor had been crowned the undisputed champion after beating Mendes, he still couldn’t claim to be the best featherweight in the world. That required a win over Aldo and nothing less. Aldo had become the best 145lb fighter in the world by seeing off the very best challengers on the planet for the past six years. In most cases he did so while in second gear. As nice as it had been to have a UFC belt in the gym, it was no more than a token.

  After he concluded his duties as a coach on The Ultimate Fighter, Conor returned to Ireland in September 2015. He kept himself ticking over with some light training while he was away and I was curious to see how the knee had been holding up. Thankfully, it appeared to be as good as new. It was no longer restricting him at all. It hasn’t been an issue since and I can only hope it stays that way.

  People often ask me for a glimpse of the schedule for Conor’s training camps, but the truth is that there isn’t one. Some coaches like to organize camps into blocks – strength training in the first four weeks, turning strength into explosiveness for the second four weeks and so on – but I don’t find that practical for MMA. With short-notice fights, opponents changing and stuff like that, the goalposts are always moving.

  At SBG, our training doesn’t really change, regardless of whether the athlete is preparing for a fight or not. We don’t tend to do training camps in the same way that other teams do. In many gyms, fighters might take a few weeks off after a bout, during which they’ll abandon their diet and do absolutely no training. Then they’ll head back into a training camp for their next fight, starting from scratch, going from one extreme to the other. We prefer to keep ticking over at a similar, steady pace throughout the year. In Conor’s case, he used to train twice a day but now he mostly does one long session – lasting three or four hours – each day. It’s not intense from start to finish. Instead he maintains a steady pace all the way through. One day could be about sparring, the next might focus on pad work, another could be all about grappling. It’s adaptable. There are no restrictions. He could wake up one morning and feel like he’s not jumping out of his skin to train, so he might just come down and do a short session working on technique. The next day he might be on fire and you’re lining up ten sparring partners for him. When that energy is there, it’s important to capitalize on it. On the odd occasion that it’s not, it’s important to make allowances. Over the course of six, eight or ten weeks, you’re going to have a few days when you’re not feeling at your best. The content of the training changes every day. You go according to how you feel.

  One side-effect of Conor being based in Dublin for the majority of this training camp was that we had to contend with people turning up at the gym looking for pictures and autographs. Conor has always been happy to accommodate his fans – he really appreciates the support – but we have a very strict policy about designating the gym as a place of work. Anybody who does come to the gym won’t get beyond the front desk unless they’re a member. People have shown up and said they’ve come all the way from America just to get a photo. They expect to march on through and ask for a selfie while Conor is in the middle of a session. People are sometimes shocked when we don’t allow them to walk in and get what they want. But the gym is where we train and it’s strictly off limits to the public. It’s the fighters’ place of business and it’s important that they’re not interrupted while conducting it.

  It was full steam ahead for Conor’s crack at becoming an undisputed UFC champion, but in the meantime there was another big night for SBG on 24 October: UFC Fight Night 76 at the 3Arena. Even though Conor wasn’t involved, the tickets sold out in a matter of minutes. Once again there was a strong SBG presence on the bill, with Paddy Holohan, Aisling Daly and Cathal Pendred flying the flag. While Ais and Cathal were to feature on the prelims, Paddy had been given a main-card slot for his clash with American prospect Louis Smolka. It was a big fight and it became even bigger as the event drew nearer. With ten days to go, an injury to Stipe Miocic forced the cancellation of his heavyweight bout against Ben Rothwell. Paddy’s fight was subsequently bumped up to be the penultimate fight of the night. But it didn’t end there. On the Tuesday night before the event, we found out that Joseph Duffy was out of his fight against Dustin Poirier due to a concussion. That fight had been at the top of the bill, so with four days to go, Paddy was promoted to headline a UFC card in his home town, just as Conor had done fifteen months earlier.

  In hindsight, it was too much, too soon. It had been a nice, low-key build-up to what was an important fight for Paddy, in which a win would have been rewarded with a place in the rankings in the 125lb division. Then, all of a sudden, a heavy weight of promotion rested on his shoulders. A lot of pressure accompanies the role of being an Irish fighter in a UFC main event on home soil, and Paddy felt it. He did his best but, as he confided in me afterwards, he just wasn’t ready to handle it. His ultimate aim was to be involved in those high-profile occasions but he wanted to work his way into that position gradually. The expectation became extremely draining. Even the walk-out left him feeling tired. As soon as he stepped inside the octagon, his legs felt heavy. That’s common for fighters – it’s a natural feeling, a hormonal fight-or-flight response as blood rushes to the legs – but if you’re cognizant of the magnitude of the situation, that can grow in your head and spread throughout your body, to the detriment of your performance. You can usually brush off that feeling of heaviness once the action begins, but if there’s even a tiny seed of doubt in your mind, that seed will flourish and manifest itself in your physical output. That’s exactly what happened to Paddy against Louis Smolka. He looked sluggish right from the start and he faded very quickly. That had never happened to him before. He has maintained a good pace in three-rounders before and against opponents that I’d rate as tougher than Smolka. But fair play to Smolka, who wasted no time in capitalizing. He scored a rear naked choke win in the second round. It was hugely disappointing, but Paddy learned so much from the experience, and I’m excited to see him putting those lessons into practice.

  There were mixed fortunes for us earlier on the card, but the night really belonged to Aisling Daly. During the previous UFC show in Dublin, Ais had been stuck in filming for The Ultimate Fighter while her teammates were creating the biggest night in the history of Irish MMA. Missing out on that was really tough for her, so she was determined to make the most of this opportunity. She had been battling depression and was coming off a loss to Randa Markos the previous April, so Ais left no stone unturned in her preparation for this fight. Her opponent, Ericka Almeida, was a teammate of José Aldo’s at Nova União in Brazil, so it was also a chance for Ais to draw first blood for SBG in that particular battle.

  Everything that night went Aisling’s way, from the walk-out to the fight itself. Befo
re we went out, I told Ais to soak the whole occasion in. That’s important for fighters. Sometimes we forget that. I want all my fighters to be able to look back on these moments some day with their grandkids and have great stories to tell. We can often be guilty of rushing through fights and ignoring the atmosphere, but you’ve got to create memories to cling to, which will remind you of why you put in all this effort when you reflect on your career in twenty, thirty, forty years’ time.

  However, I also said to Ais that when we got to the octagon, everything else was to be blocked out. That’s exactly what happened. She looked me in the eye and I could see that she had flicked the switch. She was in the zone now. Ericka was good, but Ais was on fire. The unanimous-decision win was her reward for months of hard work.

  It wasn’t such a good night for Cathal Pendred. He’d had so many fights in such a short space of time – this was to be his sixth in just fifteen months – and I tried to steer him in the direction of taking a break. But he just wanted to keep going. His opponent, Tom Breese, had far less experience, but he’s someone who I believe could go on to great things in the future. The difference in skill between them was enormous, as evidenced by Breese’s first-round TKO win. Breese made it very one-sided. You could do nothing but tip your hat to him. He’s definitely one to watch.

  Cathal hadn’t been his usual self in the build-up to that fight. The desire and determination that had taken him so far seemed to be lacking.

  When Cathal told me a few weeks later that he had decided to retire from MMA, it didn’t come as any great surprise. He had been going non-stop for a long time and I knew the hunger was starting to fade, as it eventually does for everyone. Other interests away from the gym were starting to enter his life, which is a healthy thing. I always encourage my fighters to make sure that they’re working on an exit strategy for when that time comes. Cathal had a few things on the go, including potential movie roles, media work and opening a restaurant. As a result, he was starting to miss training sessions, which was extremely out of character for him. When you start seeing stuff like that, you know the fighter has one foot out the door already.