John Kavanagh Shares Coaching Philosophy: Get Out of Conor’s Way

John Kavanagh and the McGregor coaching staff are committed to taking a hands-off, “don’t mess with the chef” approach to Conor McGregor ahead of UFC 246.

Conor McGregor has reached the pinnacle of mixed martial arts as the first simultaneous double champion in the history of the UFC. He was able to land a flawless precision blow to the chin of Jose Aldo to capture the UFC featherweight title and then turn in a video-game esque performance in his dominant win over Eddie Alvarez at UFC 205.

During and leading up to both performances, McGregor demonstrated incredible composure under the pressure and made the right reads at the right moments. Through it all, John Kavanagh has been by McGregor’s side through his entire journey, and he now knows that McGregor is the best pilot to his own success, and that, as a coach, his role is to just monitor in the cockpit:

“With Conor’s fighting IQ, with Conor’s understanding of the game, really, this training camp is about all of us getting out of his way,” Kavanagh told The Mac Life. “Provide him an environment where he gets different looks, different feels, and support him. Where he wants the training camp to go, with intensities, and listening to him – where he has days where he has days where he wants to push hard, and days where he wants to slow down.

“It’s not so much about us coaches sitting down to game plan and then filling Conor in. Conor knows more about fighting than the rest of us put together.”

Conor McGregor also knows that he will be fighting a fellow “fighting veteran” in Donald Cerrone, the ultimate veteran in fact who will put McGregor’s fighting IQ to the test. No one has more UFC fights than Donald Cerrone, and when it comes to must-win situations, a case can be made that no fight has been more crucial for The Notorious One.