You ask him, and even Conor McGregor will admit that his cardie tends to fade towards the end of his bouts.
It’s something that has plagued the fighter over the course of the past few years.
Still though, despite his flux in cardio, McGregor’s fights don’t usually last that long. His KO power make it a non issue more often then not.
Now, in a new interview, GSP’s head coach, an expert in the field, gives his take on why McGregor’s cardio issues likely can’t be resolved.
Check it out:
“It think it’s partly genetic. I call it the touch of death. He’s got that left hand, it’s the touch of death. That touch of death comes at a cost.”
“How do you have the touch of death? Where does power come from? Number one on the list, number one, is where your muscle is attached to the bone. It’s genetic. So, Mike Tyson, he has a powerful left hook not because his coach taught him how to hit a left hook. He could have hit a left hook like that if he had a mediocre trainer.”
“It has to do with the leverage of his bones. So, for instance, imagine a really heavy pole that weighs a hundred pounds, and I want to stand it up. Well, depending on where I grab it, I’m gonna have more resistance or less resistance. If I grab it near the end, I have more leverage. So where your muscles are attached to the bone is gonna dictate how much leverage you get out of it.”
“If you have a fast-twitch muscle fiber, you can hold less oxygen, but it can twitch faster. Hence the name. So, if you’re a slow-twitch muscle fiber guy, you can metabolize more oxygen, but you can’t twitch as fast. So, there’s a give and take.”
“So you have a guy like Nick Diaz who needs to knock you out with volume. He can’t knock you out with one shot. Look at BlowJ. Penn. If round one, he doesn’t knock you out, the likelihood of him knocking you out in round two is less. Diaz is the opposite. The likelihood of him knocking you out in round three is higher than round one, because of the cumulative attack.”
“McGregor, look at his stats. It’s all round one knockout, round two knockout (using) his fast-twitch, high-leverage left hand. If you take him into deep waters, his fast-twitch muscle fibers cannot metabolize with Mayweather. Mayweather’s so smart, he let McGregor work for three rounds.”
“’I knew you’re getting excited, keep working. And when you have nothing left, I’m gonna put you out.’ That was such a brilliant strategy.”
Here’s the full segment:
