It's a common line that has been trotted out ever since it became apparent that Conor McGregor would compete for the UFC featherweight title that Dana White and the UFC were 'fast-tracking' the Dublin native's path to success, but McGregor's likely next opponent at featherweight has now claimed that the organisation are even paying for his coaches.
In an interview Elite Daily, Frankie Edgar claimed that the UFC is paying for Olympic gold medal winning wrestler Jordan Burroughs to coach Conor McGregor in order to improve the perceived weakest aspect of his game.
Edgar made the claim after explaining that he was not worried about McGregor's power, and suggesting that the Irishman should be worried about the best part of his game instead:
I’m not too worried about it. If I was to fight Conor, I wouldn’t sit there worrying about getting hit. I’m just gonna do what I do best.
I’m sure he’s working on it. He better be. The UFC hired [Olympic gold medalist] Jordan Burroughs to be his wrestling coach. He knows that’s his weakness. It’s not something you learn overnight, especially wrestling. It’s a feel-type of sport, takes time.
If true, that is a pretty blatant show of favouritism from the UFC and will likely upset a lot of fighters. While it's clear that Conor McGregor is extremely good for business, the idea that an organisation of the size of the UFC would risk their integrity by doing this in order to keep one man as the champion seems a tad unlikely.
That's not to call Frankie Edgar a liar, perhaps he has that information on good authority, but it seems very doubtful that Conor McGregor would bring in someone new at this point in his UFC career or that he would even consider his wrestling as a weakness.
If you were to ask Conor, his wrestling is just fine, and although Chad Mendes took him down numerous times with ease at UFC 189, he would point to the lack of damage done as a reason to suggest that nothing needs to change.
It will be interesting to see if anything more is said on this in the coming days, and if he is to stick true to form, we can expect an Instagram post of Conor McGregor dressing impeccably well and calling this suggestion absolute bullshit.
[Elite Daily]
