UFC lightweight champion Khabib Nurmagomedov has never lost a fight in his mixed martial arts career. Even more impressive, the Dagestan native has never lost a single round. That being said, SBG Ireland head coach John Kavanagh believes Nurmagomedov’s undefeated streak can be used against him.
The reigning champion is now set to face off against SBG Ireland’s Conor McGregor in the live pay-per-view main event of UFC 229 on Oct. 6. Speaking to The Mac Life, John Kavanagh has come forward with his thoughts on the match up.
“It is interesting fighting an unbeaten fighter. I’ve had a lot of my guys that went a long time unbeaten and then they have the loss. It’s always interesting to see, in that fight where they had their first loss, when things start to go wrong. It’s an unusual feeling for them and sometimes they struggle to deal with that.
“I don’t think Khabib has lost a single round in his UFC career. If you do lose a round are you going to be able to come back out with that same level of confidence in the next round? There’s a lot of interesting things to be played out in this fight.”
“Now with Khabib, he probably brings more [dimensions to prepare for] than even Nate because with Khabib, he will throw shots. His last fight was mostly stand-up after the first round. But yes, if we were to be betting we could probably guess that he’s going to shoot right from the locker room right at the start of round one like he did in the Al Iaquinta fight. There’s probably going to be a low single coming right away. I find it hard to imagine that they have any plans for any exchanges on the feet.
“Not that he went for a whole lot of takedowns but he did start failing on his takedowns against Al Iaquinta and then he went back to that nice jab he was using in the fight. He’s rounding out his game. He’s with AKA, a very strong kickboxing background with [Javier] Mendez. I suppose they do have that as a ‘Plan B.’”
