Conor McGregor’s head coach John Kavanagh famously touted that he would do the river dance naked if Floyd Mayweather ever actually crossed over to do a rematch in the UFC.
Well, Kavanagh might be brushing up on his dancing skills because there’s a lot of talk lately about Mayweather actually considering a fight in the UFC with McGregor as the logical opponent.
Mayweather has been teasing the possibility non-stop for the past couple of weeks as he posted videos showing him stepping inside a mixed martial arts cage and then putting up a photo showing him hitting McGregor with an elbow while wearing MMA gloves.
“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. Now, I’m going to be honest, I’m practicing Irish dancing, and I’m getting nervous about that,” Kavanagh told TheMacLife.com this week.
“In all seriousness, it’s a crazy world we live in. 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.”
As far as the actual matchup goes, Kavanagh seems to agree with most experts that it would be a completely lopsided affair with McGregor walking into the fight as an overwhelming favorite to dismantle Mayweather.
While many believe that McGregor could just as easily win a stand up fight with Mayweather in the Octagon thanks to the addition to kicks along with four ounce gloves, Kavanagh says he would prefer a ground battle that would really expose the difference between high level mixed martial arts and boxing.
In fact, Kavanagh says the fight would be so one sided that he would be completely comfortable booking another bout for McGregor later that same night because putting Mayweather away would be easy work.
“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’. 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,” Kavanagh said.
“So I think it’s one of those ones we could squeeze in getting ready for a fight. I know that probably comes across a certain way, but I can only say what I’m thinking, I can only say what I feel. If that was to happen, it’s not the type of fight that Conor’s gonna have to do a real specific 12 weeks for, and then take three or four months off afterwards, and completely get ready for another one. You could kind of do that one and fit it in on the night of his real fight.”
