John Kavanagh: First Nate Diaz fight “was a bit of a circus”

Back in March, Nate Diaz stepped in on less than two weeks notice to fight Conor McGregor in the main event of UFC 196 after UFC lightweight champion Rafael dos Anjos broke his foot during training.

Diaz submitted McGregor in the second round, putting an end to McGregor’s hopes of earning a welterweight title shot, setting the stage for arguably the biggest rematch in UFC history. The pair are now slated to have their rematch at UFC 202 on August 20th in Las Vegas.

Ahead of that, SBG Ireland head coach John Kavanagh spoke to MMAJunkie to reflect on what went wrong for McGregor in the first fight:

“The Aldo fight was such a big result for the gym and the country, that we all took the foot off the pedal,” he told MMAjunkie. “Then you’re straight into another one, and it’s hard to explain the mindset at the time, but it was a bit of a circus, almost like it was a pretend fight.

“It was kind of like, ‘Ah, you’ll just hit him once and he’ll go down and then we’ll carry on with the journey and get ready for the dos Anjos fight, because that’s important.’

“Then that loss made us all take a step back and re-evaluate things. The book was the same sort of thing because my life has been jumping from one event to the next, and this sort of forced me to do that.”

It’s important to mention that McGregor has brought in several elite level training partners, including Jiu-Jitsu world champion Dillon Danis, and several Olympic boxers.

Will it be enough to help him avenge his loss to Diaz?

Video | Conor McGregor

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