<div class="Article" style="float: left;">
<table>
<tr style="vertical-align: bottom;">
<td>
<h3><a href="/go=news.detail&gid=453163" target="_blank">
Coach: Conor did zero wrestling, knee injured
</a></h3>
</td>
</tr>
</table>
<a href="/go=news.detail&gid=453163" ><img class="photo" src="http://img.mixedmartialarts.com/method=get&rs=50&q=75&x=12&y=68&w=310&h=165&ro=0&s=conor-mcgregor-chad-mendes.jpg" /></a>
<div style="clear: both; line-height: 1px;height: 1px;"> </div>
</div>
<p>If you train for a swimming event, you are going to get wet. If you train for mixed martial arts, a hurting game, you are going to get hurt. By fight time, everyone is hurt to some degree.</p>
Chad Mendes was and is the best wrestler in the UFC featherweight division. Conor McGregor's coach John Kavanagh appeared recently on Ariel Helwani's The MMA Hour, and said 'Notorious' was so injured going into his fight he did zero full wrestling or MMA sparring in preparation.
"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," said Kavanagh as transcribed by Marc Raimondi for MMAFighting.com. "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."
"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."
"When I spoke to Conor and I saw this absolutely unshakeable confidence, I knew it was the right decision. I knew it didn't matter who it was going to be.
"For Conor to have done what he did and accepted that change, I think that showed a championship mentality."
"I feel like he's the champion. He's done pretty special things in the UFC in quite a short period of time. He's been willing to accept any challenge. I don't know if there's many fighters with what he had in front of him with two weeks notice would have accepted [it]."
Conor McGregor is the UFC interim featherweight champion. He will fight UFC featherweight champion Jose Aldo in his next fight, unifying the titles. Unless something goes wrong.
<div style="clear: left; line-height: 1px;height: 1px;"> </div>
