Conor McGregor suffered an injury during training camp which may have contributed to his defeat to Dustin Poirier at UFC 264 in Las Vegas, according to his head coach John Kavanagh.
The former UFC featherweight champion snapped his tibia in Saturday night's defeat to the former UFC interim lightweight champion and underwent surgery on it the following day.
McGregor exacerbated the injury during training which required medical assessment, according to SBG Ireland coach Kavanagh, despite scans showing no damage at the time.
“A little bit of that ankle injury had been aggravated during camp,” Kavanagh said in a recent Q&A session with Laura Sanko on Instagram Live to promote his Wimp2Warrior MMA TV series. “We got a scan on it.
"Did that have a small part to play in weakening it? I don’t know.
"We were [with a doctor] a couple weeks ago to get a scan on the ankle. There might’ve been something in there.
"It would seem unusual that a young, healthy, fit man could wrap his foot around an elbow and [break it] without there being something [wrong] there before.
"You can play those guessing games all day long.”
McGregor underwent surgery on Sunday afternoon after suffering his second consecutive defeat, and his agent Audie Attar confirmed that the doctors are confident that he will be able to make a full recovery.
“He throws a leg kick, and then he threw a teep,” Kavanagh added. “That’s clearly where the fracture happened.
"He threw an aggressive kick, Dustin shelled with the lead hand, and the foot wraps around the elbow in a similar fashion to [Anderson] Silva and [Chris] Weidman.
"They wrapped their foot around the shin, [McGregor] wrapped his shin around the elbow. He’s in the hospital right now. I’ll be heading over there after this to check in.
"It’s a bitter pill to swallow. This sport is the highest highs and the lowest lows. We’ve got to take some time to assess what the next move is.
"Obviously rehab and recovery is where it’s at.”
Kavanagh also said he had seen signs of improvement in McGregor since the second fight against Poirier, and believes the win wasn't too far away.
He continued: “It was going fantastic. I thought he looked really, really good in there. I wasn’t concerned at all.
"I was actually really, really happy. At the 4:30 mark or even the 4:45 mark, everything is gravy. I thought energy looked good, technique looked good.
"A few adjustments in between rounds, and I thought round two we were well on track to getting a finish there, or keep the rhythm going for the rest of the fight.
“Credit to Dustin. He won. It’s an unfulfilling end to the night. It doesn’t feel properly finished. [There was no] closure.”
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