Conor McGregor’s longtime coach John Kavanagh says he is responsible for the toe injury that forced McGregor out of his scheduled UFC 303 clash with Michael Chandler.
McGregor is now slated to make his comeback this Saturday at UFC 329, ending a five-year hiatus, after a new main event was announced against Max Holloway. The Chandler bout was originally targeted for June 2024 before the injury derailed those plans.
Kavanagh explained that the injury happened in a sparring session that was being filmed for UFC video documentation and involved training partner Tristan. “I’ll say it more bluntly than [McGregor] will,” Kavanagh said, before adding, “Look, I’ll put my hand up,” and, “I should have had all the gear on them and they didn’t and he awkwardly caught Tristan’s elbow and that happened very early. … That happened in the first minute or so of Round 1 and he kind of whispered to me in between the rounds that he feels his toe is broke. I’m trying to stop it and he insisted on doing the next four rounds, he did all five rounds, because you can kind of run on adrenaline a little bit. But yeah, it was nasty.”
“Sick,” Kavanagh said of how he felt about the situation. “Really, really sick. … It was my fault. I’m not going to beat around the bush on it. Should have had the gear on them.” He added that McGregor’s current UFC 329 camp has been different: “So we’ve been super careful this training camp. Not a niggle on him, not a bump, not a bruise, 100 percent, and we’ll get to see the best version of him.”
