Coach: Mac’s Leg Previously Injured In Camp

Conor McGregor aggravated an ankle injury in his UFC 264 training camp, which may have led to the broken leg “Notorious” suffered in the first-round of his Dustin Poirier headliner last Sat. night (July 10, 2021) inside T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, Nevada.

That’s according to longtime coach John Kavanagh.

“A little bit of that ankle injury had been aggravated during camp,” Kavanagh told Laura Sanko. “We got a scan on it. Did that have a small part to play in weakening it? I don’t know. We were (with a doctor) a couple weeks ago to get a scan on the ankle. … There might’ve been something in there. It would seem unusual that a young, healthy, fit man could wrap his foot around an elbow and (break it) without there being something (wrong) there before. You can play those guessing games all day long.”

McGregor suffered a fracture of his tibia and fibula in the opening frame of his Poirier trilogy and went into surgery on Sunday morning. “Notorious” is expected to make a full recovery (and eventual comeback) but will spend the next six weeks on crutches.

The Irishman joins fellow ex-UFC champions Anderson Silva and Chris Weidman on the unenviable list of gruesome pay-per-view (PPV) leg breaks.

“He throws a leg kick, and then he threw a teep,” Kavanagh continued. “That’s clearly where the fracture happened. He threw an aggressive kick, Dustin shelled with the lead hand, and the foot wraps around the elbow in a similar fashion to Silva and Weidman. They wrapped their foot around the shin, (McGregor) wrapped his shin around the elbow.”

The victory will send Poirier into a lightweight title fight against Charles Oliveira later this year. And whether or not “Notorious” can work his way back to a “Diamond” do-over may depend on how the “Do Bronx” battle plays out.