It’s one of the most hotly-anticipated non-title fights in recent UFC history.
Conor McGregor’s re-match with Nate Diaz at UFC 202 is less than a fortnight away, and the Irishman has already packed up following his gruelling, 19-week training camp.
With just the weight cuts to go before the main event on August 20, McGregor’s coach, John Kavanagh, has once again opened up about his star fighter’s preparations in his column for The42.ie.
“The word we’ve been focusing on for this camp is ‘routine’,” Kavanagh explains. “We basically did the same thing every day since we arrived in Vegas: Leave the house to go to the gym for a skill session at 1pm, before working on cardio in the evenings.
“We’ve been following that pattern now for what feels like a long time — about 19 weeks in total come fight night. Although it seems like it has been a long process, we’re definitely seeing the fruits of our labour. There are certain fitness tests that we have numbers on, and the improvements from when Conor began to where he is now have been dramatic.
“There’s no comparing this training camp to any we have done previously. I can’t stress enough how different this has been. As many of you will probably already know, routine hasn’t been something you would have associated with Conor’s preparations in the past.
“But this has been like nothing we’ve done before.”
Kavanagh believes that this extra preparation will stand to McGregor not just for this fight, but for all future fights, and even hinted at some new moves from The Notorious.
And while McGregor has predicted a second-round KO of Diaz this time around, his coach is a little more conservative.
The Straight Blast Gym guru is predicting that Diaz will take McGregor further than he has ever gone before, saying he expects the fight to be ended in the fourth round – either by the referee or Diaz’s team.
“I’m veering towards a fourth-round finish in his favour, following an opening three rounds which I expect him to dominate in the same manner he did in the first frame of the previous fight,” he writes.
“We’re ready for 25 minutes but I do believe that the cumulative damage will have become too much by the fourth round, resulting in Nate’s corner stopping the fight if the referee doesn’t do it before that.”
To date, only one of McGregor’s 22 professional MMA fights have gone the distance – a unanimous decision victory over Max Holloway August 2013 which only spanned three rounds.
It’s clear that The Notorious is preparing for the toughest fight of his life. And we can’t wait for it.
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