Lightweight fighter Myles Price could be one of the few men in MMA today who had the chance to train with both Khabib Nurmagomedov and Conor McGregor. The former SBG Dublin representative is now with the American Kickboxing Academy helping the current UFC 155-pound champion train against “The Notorious” for UFC 229 this October.
The 30-year-old Price revealed that he did not exactly get along with McGregor.
“I’ll be honest with you, I never really got on well with Conor within the gym because me and Conor sparred a lot,” Price said on a recent episode of Eurobash (transcript via MMA Fighting). “At the time, Conor was taking fights at lightweight.”
According to Price, McGregor was not exactly the ideal sparring partner one would want to have.
“I understand the hierarchy within gyms,” he said. “Even here at AKA you have heated spars, but afterwards we shake each other’s hands, we talk about what we can work on and develop as training partners or as a team.”
“Basically, with Conor, he’s quite narcissistic. He’ll see you as competition. He’s not very nice to be around in the gym. If you’re giving him hard spars, he won’t see you as a friend after a while.”
“It was surprising how welcoming they were when I got talking to them. I’ve become a part of the family at AKA.”
Price also had something to say about the UFC 229 presser in New York City on Thursday. For him, McGregor became a little too “emotional,” which he sees as an advantage for Khabib.
“What I took from it was: Conor looked very emotionally invested. He couldn’t sit still for two seconds — it was an irrational press conference on his behalf,” Price said. “
He wouldn’t let Khabib talk, he couldn’t take a deep breath, he was moving around a lot. It’s seemed like an over the top reaction and for me, an emotional reaction like that is bad. If he comes across emotional like that, it’s only a good thing for Khabib.”
“Khabib was calm, he was collected and you could see that Khabib was not going to react to any of his b-llocks. He was fully prepared for it, he stayed calm, he put the microphone down when he needed to because there’s no point in fighting fire with fire with Conor. If you get emotionally invested back into him then he’s won that battle — you’re on the level he wants you to be at.
“[McGregor] kind of said a lot of things that were out of line too that took some rationality away from his persona. That will dribble into his performance on Oct. 6. He’s still a human being. At the end of the day, when we’ve seen Conor crack and underperform, it’s when he’s been emotional.”
As for the upcoming fight on October 6th, Price is confident that Khabib would be able to handle himself no matter where the fight goes.
“It’s like having a wet blanket on you in every single session,” Price said of Khabib. “When I jump in and do my session with Khabib, it just feels like there is no stopping him, he just keeps coming at you. When people commentate on his fights, it’s [very accurate] when they say it’s a shock when you feel what he feels like at first. I imagined what it was going to be like, but that was a whole other level of pressure. It’s calculated, it’s smart, it’s vigorous — it just keeps on coming at you over and over again.”
“His stand up has gone through the roof. He’s going to have some tricks up his sleeve on Oct. 6th, that’s all I’m going to say.”
UFC 229 takes place at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas.