Before the Floyd Mayweather Jr. vs. Conor McGregor boxing match was finalized, no one in combat sports world even fathomed that such a matchup would ever become a reality. Nowadays, this is how some of them see Mayweather’s much talked about move to mixed martial arts.
McGregor’s head coach John Kavanagh, however, believes that something is in the works for Floyd’s transition to being made final.
“I’m kind of reminded of early last year when I was asked about the boxing fight and I was doubtful as anybody, and I actually went as far as to stupidly tweet that I’ll do the Irish river dance naked, if Floyd steps in the Octagon,” Kavanagh told TheMacLife.com (via MMAWeekly). “Now, I’m going to be honest, I’m practicing Irish dancing, and I’m getting nervous about that.”
“In all seriousness, it’s a crazy world we live in,” he continued. “The fight that could never happen happened. And now this is a fight that can never happen, and it seems to be getting, I don’t know, there seems to be something forming there. I would absolutely love it.”
Just like how predictions looked when they fought under boxing rules, most foresee a quick finish of Mayweather if he fought McGregor inside the cage. But if it were up to Kavanagh, the fight would showcase some of MMA’s other aspects and would not be limited to striking.
“Now, let’s be realistic here. If the fight was to happen, I would nearly be saying to Conor and pushing Conor to say, ‘Let’s book that two or three weeks before a real one,’” Kavanagh said. “Because we can go in and — I’d almost insist that in that fight Conor shoots a double leg early — because I’d be almost annoyed if he went in there and put him away quickly with MMA striking. We need to see jiu-jitsu in that fight.”
“He needs to be in the mount slapping [Mayweather] about a little bit. So it would be, I think, such a straight, easy fight that we could train realistically for it and then do a competitive MMA fight on the backend of it.”
While talks of a rematch against McGregor under MMA rules are on the table, Floyd’s uncle Jeff recently spoke about the possibility of his nephew fighting CM Punk for his would-be UFC debut.