John Kavanagh wants the McGregor injury truthers to stand down. Conor McGregor’s coach told Ariel Helwani this week that his fighter walked into UFC 329 completely healthy, and according to talkSPORT, Kavanagh is sticking with dry ice as the culprit behind the ACL injury McGregor suffered that night against Max Holloway.
Helwani posted the clip on X, and Kavanagh didn’t hedge.
“And for the conspiracy theorists out there, he walked in with no injury. Zero injury. There was absolutely no injury,” Kavanagh said.
View post on X
Then he went a step further, which is the part that’ll get people talking. “I can guarantee you that he was 100% going in. In fact, probably more healthy going into this one than the last few.”
Sports Illustrated framed it as Kavanagh blasting a viral pre-fight narrative attached to the Holloway loss. The speculation, as Helwani put it, was that McGregor entered the Octagon compromised. Kavanagh’s answer is that the camp had no warning signs at all, and he summed up the night in one line: “Everything was really 100%, and then it wasn’t.”
He also walked through the game plan for the opening seconds. McGregor has always liked to have his first move scripted, Kavanagh said, and for this camp it was a kick he’d drilled constantly.
View post on X
“This one, he had come up with that kick, and he had done it a thousand times,” Kavanagh said. “He started every spar with this move, and it always went really well, whether it was a good shot that was landing or at least throwing the opponent off.”
Kavanagh called it one of the lowest moments he’s had in the sport, the flip side of the highs he says MMA always delivers.
The age conversation isn’t going away either. McGregor is 38, and an X account (@DovySimuMMA) circulated a list this week putting him alongside Alex Pereira (39), Kamaru Usman (39), Justin Gaethje (37), Israel Adesanya (37) and Alexander Volkanovski (38). Spinnin Backfist replied by pointing out that Joshua Van is 24, which is the kind of reply that makes a 38-year-old with a bad knee feel every one of those years.
Holloway, for his part, has been busy rewriting history on cardboard. Championship Rounds posted a Topps card he signed reading “Fight didn’t count, still BMF” about his loss to Charles Oliveira.
View post on X
Kavanagh has other things on his plate now too. In a separate clip Helwani posted the same day, he announced he’s joined KI MMA in an ambassador role alongside Scott Coker and Rich Chou, helping with fighters, venues and whatever else comes up. “Basically, whatever needs to be done, I get done,” he said.
I’ll give Kavanagh this much: he put his name and his face on it, which beats a week of anonymous message board diagnoses. You can roll your eyes at dry ice as the explanation, and plenty of people will, but a coach going on camera and saying “I can guarantee you” is about as straight an answer as this sport hands out. What he didn’t offer was any word on what comes next for a 38-year-old coming off a torn ACL, and that’s the answer everybody actually wants.
