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06th Jul 2017

Head coach discusses Conor McGregor’s remarkable sparring schedule for Mayweather bout

No stone unturned

Ben Kiely

Anyone who thinks this is just a payday for Conor McGregor should listen to John Kavanagh.

With that much money on the line, it would be easy to write Conor McGregor’s ambitious bout against Floyd Mayweather off as no more than a cash-grab. However, just because they’re slugging it out for an outrageous purse doesn’t mean either competitor isn’t taking the fight itself seriously.

Judging by John Kavanagh’s recent interview with the MacLife, McGregor is fully obsessed with the behemoth challenge that stands in front of him.

“We’re doing four times the amount of sparring for this camp than we would do for a regular MMA camp. That’s a huge amount of extra rounds.

“To be able to do four times the amount of sparring, the progress we’re seeing – because after each session we do a video analysis – the progress we’re seeing from one session to the next…”

Kavanagh expanded revealing that McGregor’s jotting down notes, conducting video analysis, monitoring his sleep and, of course, repeating the process until fight night.

“Like everything Conor does, when Conor gets his mind on something he’s scarily focused. To see him apply that, and even yesterday we were up in his house and he’s writing down his notes like the old days again. We watched the video and we compared his notes, we make improvements and then we spar again and repeat.”

A big part of McGregor’s preparations for past fights has been visualisation and this one is no different. With this being his professional boxing debut, there is a heavy focus on this aspect to ensure that there are no surprises on August 26.

“I think we’ll have done 44 fight nights before fight night. So the 45th time we walk out it will seem very normal to us. There won’t be anything catching us off guard.”