Conor McGregor’s Coach Prefers Trilogy with Nate Diaz Over Fight with Khabib Nurmagomedov

John Kavanagh, who is the long-time head coach of former Ultimate Fighting Championship featherweight and lightweight champion Conor McGregor, has weighed in on who he believes his star pupil should face in his return to the Octagon.

Most fans believe a match between McGregor and current lightweight champion Khabib Nurmagomedov is a lock, although until McGregor’s legal issues are sorted as a result of his bus attack back in April, nothing has been officially announced. McGregor and his legal team are currently working on a plea deal.

Kavanagh, the head coach of SBG Ireland in Ireland, talked with MMA Fighting.com and stated despite everyone wanting McGregor vs Nurmagomedov, he would prefer a trilogy fight with Nate Diaz:

“Nate Diaz is my favorite fight, by the way,” Kavanagh said. “If I could pick a fight for the next one it would be that trilogy. I realize it’s not the fan-favorite.

“The fan-favorite, without a close second, is the Khabib fight, but for me, it’s the Nate Diaz rematch and I think the Khabib fight is a lot more straight forward.”

While McGregor has fought most of his career at 145 and 155 pounds with huge success, arguably his biggest challenge so far was against a bigger guy in Diaz at 170 pounds. The Stockton native took the Irishman’s best strikes in both their fights and continued to walk forward.

”For me, he had already lost to him, it’s a bigger guy, Conor’s skill set is shutting people’s consciousness off and he’s impossible -- a freaking Homer Simpson head, he just keeps moving forward,” Kavanagh said.

“Conor’s bravery in [the fight], I’ve seen Conor fight a lot of people that he’s able to walk through and that’s great, it’s fun and you raise a belt, but it doesn’t it doesn’t really excite me that much, not really. But that fight, if you’d been around him, by the time he’d got backstage [after losing the first Diaz fight], we were watching that night, and then the next morning he was not off the phone until Lorenzo and Dana said that would be his next fight.”