John Kavanagh: Boxing obsession hurt Conor McGregor in loss to Dustin Poirier at UFC 257

SBG Ireland coach John Kavanagh believes his team had the wrong approach for Conor McGregor entering the rematch with Dustin Poirier.

According to Kavanagh, the focus on boxing and not MMA played a major part in McGregor’s TKO loss on Jan. 23 at UFC 257. It was a rematch at lightweight that stemmed from a featherweight bout won by McGregor TKO seven years prior.

This time, the result was much different as McGregor (22-5 MMA, 10-3 UFC) was stopped with a vicious combination from Poirier (27-6 MMA, 20-6 UFC) after getting slowed down by calf kicks all through the first and second rounds. McGregor did have success early, and even won the first round on all three judges’ scorecards, but he was significantly hurt by the accumulation of Poirier’s kicks.

When he looks back on it now, Kavanagh thinks the obsession with boxing hurt McGregor’s performance at UFC 257, as the former two-division champion wasn’t ready for the kicking aspect of MMA.

“I describe it as a game of spinning plates,” Kavanagh told BT Sport. “You’re spinning the boxing plate and you realize the wrestling plate is about to stop, so you have to go spin that one, and then you have to go spin the jiu-jitsu one, you have to spin the kickboxing one.

“We got a bit obsessed with the boxing one. There was talk of a big boxing fight after that. Our bad, our mistake, our fault – no one to blame. We just have to make sure we have to keep spinning that kickboxing plate and all the other aspects of MMA and get ready for the rematch.”

The “big boxing fight” Kavanagh referenced was a potential showdown with Manny Pacquiao after UFC 257. Even Poirier said he thought McGregor wanted to face him in preparation for Pacquiao, as Pacquiao is a southpaw fighter like Poirier. McGregor is no stranger to the boxing game, as he fought Floyd Mayweather back in 2017 in one of the biggest combat sports events in history.

Either way, Kavanagh doesn’t want to discredit Poirier and his American Top Team crew, but he does think a few adjustments would change the result in a third bout.

Kavanagh hopes to see a Poirier-McGregor trilogy in the summer and is confident an MMA approach, not a boxing one, will put them on the winning side.

“Fair play to Dustin, Mike (Brown) and the guys,” Kavanagh said. “Even when he was getting clocked, he got hit a couple of times hard, and he still didn’t start getting into a trading war or try and gas himself out or go for a takedown.

“We have to fix that technical detail. It’s not like we have to fix everything,” Kavanagh said. “It’s just a small enough area, get that back into the whole game. The knock on him was the boxing mentality going into an MMA mentality. Conor was always famous for his movement, his ability to change stances, his bounce as he would say, and we need to bring that all back. It’s there; it’s under the hood. It’s not like the skills need to be learned or even relearned. They just have to be reignited and we have to start that process. Wouldn’t it be great to do it again in the summer in Vegas in front of 20,000 screaming people and we can get the world back open again?”