Coach John Kavanagh recounts the first thing Conor McGregor told him about Mayweather fight

We’re now just days out from Conor McGregor‘s blockbuster boxing match with Floyd Mayweather Jr., and it’s all anybody can talk about. There was a time not all that long ago, however, when the fight itself seemed like a near impossibility; a fantastical dream fight too bogged down by bureaucracy and complicated negotiations to actually happen.

But then it did. Almost out of nowhere, reports began to surface suggesting that the deal was almost done, and then, on June 14, it was official.

On the latest episode of The MMA Hour, McGregor’s head coach John Kavanagh recounted the first thing Conor McGregor said to him once the fight had been given the green light.

“He just said, ‘The man has made a grave error. This is going to be Bruce Lee sh*t. This is water becoming the cup,’” Kavanagh explained (h/t Shaun Al-Shatti of MMAFighting.com). “First of all, I read that and I went, oh, the Mayweather fight is actually on. I didn’t quite believe it until then, so that blew me away, and my brain starts racing, ‘okay, I’ve got to put certain wheels into motion.’”

“But I don’t think it was until a couple of weeks later, or maybe days later, that I kinda read again and I realized what he was saying about the Bruce Lee water quote — that the ruleset might change and the strategy will change, but the fundamentals remain the same. This is something my own coach has told me a long, long time ago — Matt Thornton — that if you take an MMA fighter and you put him in a kickboxing match or a wrestling match, or a self-defense situation, the rules of engagement certainly change and that will affect your strategy, but the fundamentals of timing, of distance, of range, of how to hit hard, different striking techniques, they will remain the same.”

Do you think Conor McGregor, with the help of John Kavanagh and the rest of his team, can pull off an upset for the ages this weekend?

This article first appeared on BJPenn.com on 8/22/2017.