Following Conor McGregor’s historic win over Eddie Alvarez at UFC 205 over the weekend, everyone wants to know what comes next for the Irish UFC superstar.
On Monday’s episode of The MMA Hour, McGregor’s long-time coach John Kavanagh spoke about the next potential fight for “The Notorious” and said that he personally would like to see the McGregor vs. Diaz trilogy fight because he feels Nate is the second best lightweight in the world next to Conor McGregor.
#1 and #2 UFC ranked lightweights Tony Ferguson and Khabib Nurmagomedov may strongly disagree with Kavanagh, but the SBG Ireland head coach said that was all simply his opinion when asked about who feel should come next in line when asked by Ariel Helwani.
“A lot to learn in the preparation for them [Ferguson and Nurmagomedov] and both would be extremely interesting fights for me to watch, problems to solve and to see Conor beating both of them and how he did it would be very interesting for me.” Kavanagh said. “But I do think Nate would, not comfortably, but be quite a bit better than either of them.”
Helwani asked that if Kavanagh feels there is more to prove in another fight with Diaz.
“I’m not sure about prove, I just think for me, he [Nate] provides the most interesting set of problems. Like I said, Khabib, great fighter. I really enjoy his fights. I enjoy watching from them and learning from them. I just thought in the opening two or three minutes of the Johnson fight we kind of saw what would happen if he was to face Conor. He got tagged quite a bit. I just think the sort of power and accuracy Conor brings, you know I’m sure Eddie had a great plan until 60 seconds in when he was scrambled and I don’t think it would go massively different if he was to face him [Khabib].
“Tony gets hit a lot as well,” Kavanagh added. “Super tough guy. Keeps coming forward. Great fighter. Think it would go that way.”
Kavanagh added that Nate’s skillset would give him the advantage in a fight with both Ferguson and Nurmagomedov.
“Then Nate, he’s such a good boxer. Like I said I do think, if I take away his circumstances, the Diaz 2 fight is my favorite fight. It’s the one I keep going back to, keep watching,” Kavanagh said. “Just technically, the 25 minutes in that, I learned so much in that. I thought it was a really, really nice fight. Two extremely skilled strikers.
“I don’t think Nate gets nearly enough credit for how good he is and I think with his jiu-jitsu, incredible guard, incredible guillotines, incredible triangles, if the likes of Khabib or Tony was to shoot in on him because they would be getting lit up on the feet, I think he would finish them.”
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