Post his victory over Chad Mendes at UFC 189, Conor McGregor alluded to an injury which he had to deal with in the build up to the biggest fight of his career.
A knee injury was something which there had been rumours about in the weeks beforehand but nothing concrete had emerged.
Speaking on the MMA Hour with Ariel Helwani on Tuesday, Conor McGregor's coach, John Kavanagh, outlined just how much the injury restricted the now interim featherweight title holder's preparations.
Despite facing into a bout with a highly adept wrestler - the type of opponent many thought could be the Dubliner's kryptonite - McGregor had not completed one single round of live wrestling in training.
I've gotta be honest, when we were walking out to this fight it was in the back of my mind that we haven't done a single round of live wrestling. I had my eyebrows raised and thought, let's see what happens.
Really the first round of full wrestling was done in that fight. His timing a little bit on the sprawl and dealing with the shot was not quite there. It started getting better as the fight went on. Do I think a rematch if it does happen down the line would be different? Yes, for both of them.
Kavanagh said that further details regarding the injury would likely come out in the future but he did not want further expand at the time.
He did however say that the injury had fully healed two weeks before the fight, but that Saturday night was the first real test of the knee.
That was the first full test on the knee and he flew through it. He was able to deal with some oppositions. There were some scrambles, there was a lot of wrestling and it held up and there's nothing wrong. So we're 100 percent confident that it's perfect now.
Picture credit: Esther Lin / SPORTSFILE
