Conor McGregor’s UFC 205 triumph was as close as possible to the perfect fight that you’re going to see.
Throughout eight minutes ‘The Notorious’ dominated Eddie Alvarez – the man who many felt would finally have the perfect skill-set to counteract McGregor’s style.
But instead, Alvarez found himself scratching his head as it was pummelled with left hands.
The defending lightweight champion only landed two significant strikes to McGregor’s head in the UFC 205 headliner and he failed on all three of his takedown attempts.
He looked terrible and McGregor, as we’ve become accustomed to seeing, looked terrific.
But you don’t get to where the first ever two-weight UFC champion is without being a perfectionist and his head coach John Kavanagh has since revealed that McGregor was even able to pick holes in his performance on Saturday night in New York.
“I spoke to Dee (McGregor’s girlfriend) afterwards and we watched the fight back and I was like ‘I really enjoyed that!’ because it was quite a beautiful fight,” Kavanagh said on the MMA Hour.
“I think it was Muhammad Ali that said that a fighter’s always trying to chase the perfect performance where everything just went right.
“I said to her that that fight was quite technically beautiful to watch but I guarantee that Conor’s going to slate it and sure enough the next night we were watching it and he berated – not berated it – but he was pulling apart different moments saying ‘No, I shouldn’t have done that. I should have done this.’
“And me and her were throwing our eyes up laughing but you have to be like that. You have to be what some people might say is borderline insanity in demanding extreme perfection from himself.
Eddie tagged again! All @TheNotoriousMMA so far! #UFC205 #UFCNYC https://t.co/hIc1TL1byN
— eir Sport (@eirSport) November 13, 2016
“How else are you going to push yourself to be that perfect? Because I really think that he could probably do a lot less and still be able to beat most of these guys but he’s not trying to beat them, he’s trying to beat himself. He’s trying to be the perfect fighter for himself and that’s what I’ve seen since day one.
“But the takedown defence, the four-punch combination that finished it, the shot selection on how he was dropping him at the beginning, the head over the lead leg, his pull backs… Everything in that fight was just gorgeous.”
You would have thought that avoiding any damage against the man who knocked former champion Rafael dos Anjos into oblivion in July would have been enough for McGregor to allow himself to enjoy the bout but you’d be wrong.
He was criticising the finer points of his domination when he sat down to analyse how he performed.
“If you watch the last knockdown where, as he approaches, he gently guides the feet to the side and then boom boom,” Kavanagh continued.
“He didn’t do that with the first knockdown and got caught up in the guard a little bit so he was very hard on himself about that. One or two other little things like that.
“He’s so demanding of perfection. A coach is supposed to be like that and I’m almost the one saying ‘No you did great!’
“It’s a special quality and that’s what makes him who he is, that he is that hard on himself and it’s a great bar to set for my other guys who are watching him thinking ‘Shit he’s not happy with that. He’s the one who’s first in the gym… well maybe not first in the gym but certainly the last one out.’
“It’s great because you’ll always measure yourself against what’s best in your gym and my guys have such a high bar to aim for that it makes my job a little bit easier that they’re the same on themselves. Everybody is so hard on themselves about trying to be perfect in everything we do.”
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