Coach: Conor McGregor Is ‘Still A Baby In The Sport’

Could Conor McGregor already be done with the sport of mixed martial arts?

That’s the impression fans are getting in the midst of talks for a possible big-money payday for the Irishman in a possible boxing fight against Floyd Mayweather Jr. The two sides continue to tease the potential bout on social media, but a deal has yet to officially be made.

McGregor’s head coach John Kavanagh recently spoke to the Irish Mirror to discuss his star pupil’s combat sports career, and stated that despite the talks of the possible super fight with ‘Money,’ McGregor is nowhere near done in his MMA tenure (quotes via MMA Mania):

“Like any sport there’s a sell by date,” Kavanagh said. “But Conor is 28, he’s a baby in the sport. I look at Bernard Hopkins who’s 50, winning world title fights so Conor isn’t going anywhere soon. I predict once he’s done in the sport he will disappear. People think he likes the limelight, he doesn’t. He just likes fighting and promoting fights.”

“Who knows, maybe he’ll go to Hollywood and become the next Schwarzenegger.”

At just 28 years of age, McGregor has already made history in MMA. ””The Notorious One’ knocked out one of the pound-for-pound greats of all time in Jose Aldo in just 13 seconds, and also became the first dual-weight champ in UFC history and just the third man in the promotion’s history to have held a title in two different weight classes when he dominated former lightweight champion Eddie Alvarez last November.

With the boxing match between Mayweather and McGregor becoming more of an inevitability by the day, it’s looking like he could be on a lengthy hiatus from the Octagon. Current 155-pound title contenders such as Tony Ferguson and Khabib Nurmagomedov are left waiting in the wings for a crack at the Irishman, and with a layoff for McGregor being the most likely scenario moving forward, an interim title could be implemented soon (it almost was at UFC 209).

If Kavanagh’s statement is true, one can only imagine what McGregor has in store in the years to come.