Michael Bisping came out over the week.
You guys listen to Michael Bisping’s podcast, by the way?
Believe you me, you guys should check that out.
He's fun, he's got an opinion, he never misses, and he's just got some pretty good guests
on there.
But Michael Bisping brought up a point and he said, “You know, I'm not crazy about
the way that I'm seeing Conor McGregor train.”
I'm paraphrasing it, but he said, “You know, I'm not crazy about the way I'm seeing him
train.
Where are the high-level wrestlers?
How come he doesn’t have the high-level wrestlers in there?”
So let's break this down because I have an opinion on that, and I actually don't know
who Conor is training with.
I haven't seen that.
I know he's very loyal and he's out there with his coaches and I know he's in Ireland.
I know he's at the Straight Blast Gym.
I know he's with his teammates.
Did he then bring in some outside help to try to look like Khabib?
I couldn't confirm or deny.
I don't know, but I'm going to trust that Michael does know.
He and Conor are a lot closer than Conor and I and they even have the same management.
So I'm going to trust that Bisping knows.
And I do recall, when Conor was having his troubles with Nate Diaz, he brought in Dillon
Danis, Dillon Danis specifically, to give him that look.
I haven't heard of anything like this or some wrestler that has gone out there.
I just haven't heard of that.
So let's assume that that's accurate information and that Conor did not bring in any wrestlers.
There are two sides to that coin and the first is the one that Michael Bisping is offering,
which is if you're getting ready to take on a wrestler who’s got a couple of big takedowns,
particularly and almost exclusively a single leg and/or a body lock, you should be working
on wrestlers on your single leg defense and your body lock defense.
Okay, that's the first argument and that would be the general school of thought.
And I'm not forming my opinion on where I'm at with this, but let me offer you guys the
other side.
One thing you do not want to do in training camp is get your ass kicked every day, and
it does not matter if you're getting your ass kicked at your weakness that is likely
to be exploited because of the skills of your upcoming opponent.
It does not matter what the reason is.
It is extremely important in training camp that you are not getting your ass kicked every
day.
There are times when I would take that statement back.
I'm talking about training camp, which is generally an exclusive eight weeks prior to
the fight.
Some guys will go as many as 10 and some guys will go as short as six to six-and-a-half
weeks.
The reason I point that out is, take a guy like me, I go to practice every single day
twice a day no matter what.
But, I will admit to you my effort is different.
My output is different.
I might talk to the guys a little bit more.
“I'm a little bit tired.
I might sit this one out.”
“You know what?
I could use a drink of water.”
And then, you narrow in on what is training camp where the intensity goes up and the breaks
go down and the sips of water in between rounds go away.
But that is also a great time to learn and skill-build.
Those are the times it's really good to try something new, put yourself in an uncomfortable
position.
And whatever you're preparing for a competition, you've got to have three things with your
workout partners: You got to have guys that can beat you, you got to have guys that can
push you, and you got to have guys that you can whip.
There are times when you will need a guy particularly when you are trying to learn a new skill or
a new technique that you need to be able to hit that skill or technique on and have success,
and then you'll have the guys that are going to offer you some defense there—maybe sometimes
you get it and sometimes you don’t—and then you're going to have some other guys
that are going to shut you down.
But that is what you need, and maybe that's a bigger guy, maybe it's a more experienced
guy, maybe you jump into a field that you don’t really know, but you've got to have
all three.
When you're in a training camp, you don’t want just one of those and you definitely
don’t want it to be the guy that just whips you.
You have to go home with a level of confidence each day.
No matter how hard you worked or how hard you pushed, you have to go home with a level
of confidence.
I don’t believe if you just brought a wrestler in that somebody’s going to just take Conor
down and hold him there.
I think that Conor is a good enough of an athlete and certainly of a fighter to deal
with that.
I would just offer to you, when you are bringing those guys in it can give you a very false
sense of security or a false sense of insecurity, and as the fight starts to loom and be right
around the corner, you have to be very careful.
You have to really be careful of what you let in your bubble.
Sometimes these things will happen and you'll deny them to yourself.
You don’t let them in your bubble.
“I got held down today.
My efforts suck.”
Block that out.
Block it out.
You got to be really careful.
The mental side of it is very big, and I think whenever you're talking about somebody like
Conor McGregor, who is very mentally tough, aside from every other skill he has, the one
thing that Conor never gets credit for and I don't know how is the ice running through
his veins.
To watch that guy deal with pressure and then go out there and perform, that's the big thing
that you want as an athlete.
That is what’s going to allow you to be able to live with your career when it's over.
And I can tell you when I look back at the regrets that I have in my own career, it was
never about the outcome, ever.
It was about the performance.
Did I perform to the best of my abilities or did something get in the way – a fear,
an anxiety, a distraction in your mind, an injury, a this, a that, a personal, whatever
it was?
Did you bring your skills with you on fight or not?
And this may surprise you guys to hear, sometimes the answer is, “No, I did not,” and you
still won.
Those are not the performances you look back on with a lot of pride, and there are other
times when you will lose the competition but go home with tremendous pride because you
performed, you brought your skills.
And Conor is very consistent, and I think he deserves credit for that.
A fine example is the night he fought Eddie Alvarez, first time at MSG the largest gate
in mixed martial arts history.
I know that was the largest gate, guys, because I had the record until that night when I lost
the record to Conor McGregor.
So take it from me, he was the last one out.
I realize that Eddie walked second—I don’t want to hear it—but he was the last one
out.
He was the main event.
He was closing the night and the arena was there to see him, and he walked out there
as calm and cool as can be.
And he did the same thing with Floyd Mayweather, and there's something to be said for that.
But when you're dealing with a guy like that that has those mental abilities, he knows
where his weaknesses are.
He knows what his kryptonite is.
He knows at the end of the day, no matter what the media says and what his fans and
friends and the neighbors say, he knows, “I'm just a human being.”
And if Conor did not bring in high-level wrestlers it was for a reason, and I would offer to
you that that reason was not physical, that it was mental, that somewhere he worked with
some of those guys he either felt he got what he needed and he can dot that i and cross
that t or he thought, “That’s something I'm going to have to deal with later.
I need good rounds right now.
I'm not worried about the single leg.
I'm going to be worried about teeping and keeping him away.
I'm not worried about being held down.
I'm going to be worried about putting the pace on him and pushing harder than he does
for 25 minutes should we need that long.”
Whatever it is, and I'm making things up now, but I'll bet you I'm either right or at least
I've got a hold of the right thing perhaps by the wrong end.
But I think that that would be one of the reasons why you're not seeing some of those
high-level wrestlers.
That's just not something he's looking to deal with right now.
And as far as the wrestling goes of Khabib, look, he's got a tremendous pace but he attacks
with either single legs or he attacks with body locks.
It's not rocket science.
Same thing goes for Khabib.
As great of a striker as Conor is, he's going to hurt you with teeps to the body or he's
going to hurt you with a straight left hand.
It's not rocket science.
It's an ass-whipping contest in a steel cage and we can make as much of it as we want to
and I've watched people do it for years upon years, but this is about as simplistic as
society is going to allow you to get.