UFC Lightweight Champion Conor McGregor’s striking coach, Owen Roddy, admits that a bad game plan led to McGregor losing his professional boxing debut.
On Tuesday, Roddy appeared on The MMA Hour and discussed McGregor’s first professional boxing match that took place last month.
Overall, Roddy was happy with what McGregor accomplished in his fight with Floyd “Money” Mayweather. Roddy believed they had a good game plan in the beginning of the fight. But towards the end, Roddy says he was disappointed in himself for not predicting that Mayweather would become more aggressive and would start moving forward.
“We tried to switch it up from rounds six or seven. We were telling Conor, ‘just keep popping one or two shots, don’t throw any more combinations – just keep it single shots, enter into the clinch and try to push him backwards,'” Roddy said.
“I should have been aware of a game plan like that from Mayweather and that probably should’ve been done in camp. It’s hard to change things when you’re in the fight, so I’m a bit disappointed in myself that I didn’t predict that he would walk forward and let Conor catch him on the arms and walk him down.”
Roddy went on to continue to blame himself for McGregor’s loss. In the 10th round, Mayweather landed a flurry of punches with McGregor against the ropes which resulted in the referee stepping in and awarding Mayweather the TKO victory.
“I honestly thought (Mayweather) was going to pop shots, sit back, work the shoulder roll and Philly shell. He did play that game for the first couple of rounds. Conor was having success with all of that, but unfortunately, I didn’t have the stuff in place for the walking down strategy. We’ve learned from that,” Roddy said.
