Conor McGregor’s coach has made a big claim.

Fight fans still do not know when UFC lightweight champion Conor McGregor would make a return to the world famous Octagon.

UFC President Dana White has gone on record that McGregor will fight interim UFC lightweight champion Tony Ferguson next.

There was some speculation that McGregor may fight his arch rival Nate Diaz for a trilogy fight as both fighters hold a win over each other. That is not the case.

As seen in the past, McGregor usually gets what he wants when he demands it. McGregor has not been seen in the world famous Octagon since last November at UFC 205 when he won the lightweight title from Eddie Alvarez.

McGregor then fought in a boxing match with Floyd Mayweather. McGregor knows how to use the media to his advance as he can twist a narrative in his favor and put pressure on the UFC to make a move.

However, the UFC is going in a different direction. White confirmed on Wednesday that interim lightweight champion Tony Ferguson would fight title contender Khabib Nurmagomedov at UFC 223.

McGregor’s head coach, John Kavanagh, believes that if the UFC champion would knockout Khabib in two rounds if they fought.

“They’re on a path to meet each other, so I’m of course watching everything he does,” Kavanagh said of Khabib in a Facebook live interview earlier this week to promote Wimp 2 Warrior (transcript courtesy of MMA Mania).

“In his last fight, I just think when you’re facing somebody with the type of stopping power Conor has in his hands, if you just stand very upright and look to walk towards somebody and get a body lock, that’s a risky strategy.

“For somebody who can make people overextend themselves and who has genuine one punch knockout power – and we’ve seen Khabib get rocked by Michael Johnson for example – I find it hard to envisage anything other than Conor knocking him out.”

“(To cut a) long story short, I think within two rounds Conor would knock him out,” Kavanagh explained. “I think it would be maybe like the Eddie Alvarez fight, and he would stop him in the second.”

“He’s a different level of grappling with that intensity that he brings,” Kavanagh said. “It’s just a dangerous strategy. When I looked at how he closed distance in the Johnson fight compared with the Barboza fight, to me he hadn’t evolved an awful lot.”