The MMA Hour spoke to John Kavanaugh about Conor McGregor’s loss to Nate Diaz at UFC 196. John is Conor’s trainer and he opened up about what he believes the real reason is for his fighter’s loss. Here are some of the highlights:
Yeah, a lot of things were working. If there was something to critique or take away from that fight, I think Conor almost immediately said it much better than I’m able to say, is that he was inefficient with his job and Nate was efficient. And that’s what I was trying to get across, and that’s what we saw happening.
He kind of blew himself a little bit trying to take his head off with every single left hand rather than just landing it. Maybe I could have stole his own phrase and told him to keep it flowing. I think there was a good left cross, and it kind of stumbled Conor back.
I kind of think it was really exhaustion at this stage. He looked really, really tired. At that stage it was clear that he was very, very tired. And if there’s one thing you’re never going to say about a Diaz brother is that he gets tired. He just has that incredible ability to just keep going and keep pushing themselves.
They [Nate and Nick, Nate’s brother] are phenomenal athletes, the two of them. So I thought that tiredness and him being pushed back was when I was worried.