Den sjätte oktober närmar sig, och MMA-fans världen över kan knappt bärga sig till UFC 229 och mötet mellan Khabib Nurmagomedov och Conor McGregor. Det är en kollision mellan två helt olika stilar, då Nurmagomedov är e brottare av högsta rang, medan irländaren har en okonventionell striking-baserad stil.
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Inför mötet talade McGregors huvudtränare John Kavanagh med The Mac Life i en lång och detaljerad intervju om matchen. Kavanagh berättar bland annat att de försökt simulera en match så mycket som möjligt, att han hade velat se en trilogi mellan McGregor och Nate Diaz och mycket mer.
“It’s similar to Nate but for completely different stylistic reasons,” förklarade han. “If you’re fighting Nate you’re probably not dealing with a whole lot of takedowns. He doesn’t shoot in all that often. You’re probably not dealing with a whole lot of kicks, maybe not even knees and elbows. It’s almost like dealing with a boxing match, almost a singular style approach to fighting.
“Now, he’s brilliant at it and I loved that fight. I always say I’d love to see a trilogy. Now with Khabib, he probably brings more to that problem than even Nate because with Khabib he will throw shots. His last fight was mostly stand-up after the first round. But yes, if we were to be betting we could probably guess that he’s going to shoot right from the locker room right at the start of round one like he did in the Al Iaquinta fight. There’s probably going to be a low single coming right away. I find it hard to imagine that they have any plans for any exchanges on the feet.
“Not that he went for a whole lot of takedowns but he did start failing on his takedowns against Al Iaquinta and then he went back to that nice jab he was using in the fight. He’s rounding out his game. He’s with AKA, a very strong kickboxing background with [Javier] Mendez. I suppose they do have that as a ‘plan B’ but it is interesting fighting an unbeaten fighter. I’ve had a lot of my guys that went a long time unbeaten and then they have the loss. It’s always interesting to see, in that fight where they had their first loss, when things start to go wrong. It’s an unusual feeling for them and sometimes they struggle to deal with that.
“I don’t think Khabib has lost a single round in his UFC career. If you do lose a round are you going to be able to come back out with that same level of confidence in the next round? There’s a lot of interesting things to be played out in this fight.”
