{"id":288104,"date":"2018-10-14T07:08:58","date_gmt":"2018-10-14T14:08:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/staging.tcpcharms.com\/bjpenn\/?p=288104"},"modified":"2018-10-14T07:08:58","modified_gmt":"2018-10-14T14:08:58","slug":"coach-john-kavanagh-feels-ring-rust-was-a-factor-for-conor-mcgregor-at-ufc-229","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/staging.tcpcharms.com\/bjpenn\/mma-news\/ufc\/coach-john-kavanagh-feels-ring-rust-was-a-factor-for-conor-mcgregor-at-ufc-229\/","title":{"rendered":"Coach John Kavanagh feels ring rust was a factor for Conor McGregor at UFC 229"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Conor McGregor was not able to reclaim the UFC lightweight title from his arch rival Khabib Nurmagomedov. Although McGregor had some success in his UFC 229 mega fight with Nurmagomedov, he just couldn&#8217;t keep up with his destructive foe.<\/p>\n<p>His head coach John Kavanagh believes that might have something to do with his lengthy absence from MMA competition.<\/p>\n<p>To remind, Conor McGregor entered his fight with Khabib Nurmagomedov having not competed in MMA in nearly two years \u2014 since his November, 2016 knockout win over Eddie Alvarez.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Conor McGregor\u2019s coach, John Kavanagh, talks about what went wrong at UFC 229 | Ariel Helwani\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/7m1gVfnr5hY?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p id=\"FWcdsh\">\u201dIf I could go back, maybe the mentality was a little too defensive,\u201d the Conor McGregor coach said in a lengthy interview with Ariel Helwani at Saturday night&#8217;s Bellator 209 card (via <a href=\"https:\/\/www.mmamania.com\/2018\/10\/14\/17974802\/mcgregor-coach-john-kavanagh-ring-rust-played-a-part-in-loss-to-khabib\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">MMA Mania<\/a>). \u201cConor\u2019s a very offensive fighter and when his time to land was there &#8211; and we did have opportunities &#8211; it wasn\u2019t there the way it was in the Eddie [Alvarez] fight, for example. The Eddie fight was off a big training camp for [Nate] Diaz 2, which was off a big training camp for Diaz 1. So we had a lot of cage time.\u201d<\/p>\n<p id=\"jcITX4\">\u201dThis one, like you said, it\u2019s almost two years out,&#8221; he continued. &#8220;I said I didn\u2019t think ring rust would play a part, but I have to be honest, when I look at it now, when I replay it in my head, I do feel like it played a little bit of a part. He didn\u2019t quite get his shots off like he normally would. I thought defensively he did quite well defending a lot of takedowns, especially in round 3. But Khabib is amazing, amazingly effective MMA fighter. His style is suffocating, it\u2019s relentless, and he does it better than anyone else.\u201d<\/p>\n<div id=\"7fX4iY\">\n<div>\n<p id=\"vEmzN2\">\u201dIn round 3 that we won, the shots that Conor were landing didn\u2019t quite have the sting that they normally would, he wasn\u2019t able to do things how he normally would,\u201d Kavanagh concluded. \u201cSo yeah, if we could turn back time, I would have liked to spend more time on offense and capitalizing on those scenarios when they presented themselves, which they did.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Do you think Conor McGregor would have performed better at UFC 229 if he&#8217;d been more active over the last few years?<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><i>This article first appeared on\u00a0<\/i><a href=\"http:\/\/staging.tcpcharms.com\/bjpenn\/\"><span class=\"s1\"><i>BJPENN.COM<\/i><\/span><\/a><i>\u00a0on 10\/14\/2018.<\/i><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Conor McGregor was not able to reclaim the UFC lightweight title from his arch rival Khabib Nurmagomedov. Although McGregor had some success in his UFC 229 mega fight with Nurmagomedov, he just couldn&#8217;t keep up with his destructive foe. His head coach John Kavanagh believes that might have something to do with his lengthy absence [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":54430,"featured_media":287248,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false},"categories":[10089,10331,39610],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v19.7 (Yoast SEO v19.14) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Coach John Kavanagh feels ring rust was a factor for Conor McGregor at UFC 229 | BJPenn.com<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Coach John Kavanagh feels Conor McGregor would have performed better at UFC 229 if he had been more active over the last few years.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" 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