In the buildup to his August 26 boxing match with Floyd Mayweather Jr., many pundits have argued that Conor McGregor’s only chance at a victory is a puncher’s chance. In the opinion of Richard Perez, who serves as the boxing coach for McGregor’s arch-rival Nate Diaz, McGregor doesn’t even have that. Richard Perez also believes McGregor’s cardio issues – which plagued him in his fights with Diaz – will be a problem against Mayweather, and that the Irishman might resort to shady tactics to combat this problem.

“No, he doesn’t have a punchers chance – and he gasses out,” Perez said on Wednesday’s edition of BJ Penn Radio. “I don’t care how hard he trains. They’ve got to watch out for him, because he’s probably going to take the substance that he did when he [fought] with Nathan, that woke him up. I know they’re taking tests, but they’ve got to be careful with that because he will do it. There’s no way he’s going to do this without taking any substances, and be strong in boxing, because boxing is a lot of stamina.”

When asked for clarification as to what substance McGregor took in his fight with Diaz, Perez elaborated:

“Oh yeah, they even said it to me afterwards, it was awhile after the fight, that they did find him taking some substance. But they didn’t do anything to him.” 

“It was after the fight, probably a couple months after the fight, they brought it up about him. [At the time of] the last fight, it was the last fight that Nathan fought him.”

He continued, also expressing skepticism about McGregor’s rapid mass gain as he moved from featherweight to welterweight to battle Diaz:

“When you think about it, a guy at 145 [pounds], moving up to 170 the first time, he bulked up in muscle, that’s not going to happen. You’re going to have some fat in you cause you’re short. You’re not going to be all muscle like that. I even said, when Nathan first fought him, when they called him, I said, ‘look, he’s got to be on some kind of steroids or substance.’ And when Nathan asked [McGregor], he got really upset about it. If it had been me, I would have been laughing about it. I would have [sarcastically] been like ‘yeah steroids, yeah, yeah,’ but he was really mad, he was angry. So that speaks for itself right there. Mayweather and them really need to have that guy checked.”

“After the last fight, I read it, it’s not steroids, it’s something that bulks you up, I forget what it’s called. It’s illegal, still you can’t use it in the UFC, even in boxing you can’t use it. So I guess now that’s why they’re both being tested every week. I’m not sure how true that is, but…”

What do you think of these comments on Conor McGregor from Richard Perez?

This article first appeared on BJPenn.com on 8/17/2017.