Artem Lobov believes his teammate and friend, Conor McGregor will get back to the win column at UFC 264 on July 10.
At UFC 257 in January, McGregor and Poirier had their highly-anticipated rematch. In the lead-up to the scrap, the Irishman was confident he would KO Poirier again in the first, but that was far from the case as it was “The Diamond” who scored a second-round TKO. For Lobov, however, he says the loss motivated McGregor and he expects him to come out strong and prepared for the trilogy.
“Conor is a very, very smart fighter,” Lobov said on Bareknuckle Uncensored (via BJPENN). “I just feel the last fight he maybe took it a little bit lightly and thought, ‘I’ll just show up and do what I do and destroy him.’ Not only that, he was already mentally and physically getting ready for a boxing fight so he wasn’t thinking leg kicks…No MMA. He just thought it was going to be the same way as the first fight.”
If McGregor does beat Poirier in the trilogy, he will need to make some big changes and according to Lobov, he expects that to happen. He knows Poirier is much better and improved a ton, but he still expects McGregor to get the finish and do it early.
“We have to give credit to Dustin. He’s done his homework. He’s improved a lot since the first fight and he did a good job. But I think now when Conor is switched on, he knows what’s up. His full focus is on this fight. He’s studied him, he looked at what the issues were in the second fight, and honestly when Conor shows up like that? There’s no stopping him. So I see him stopping Dustin early, first, maybe second round. I want to say first. My prediction is first round but it could go into the second.”
Do you agree with Artem Lobov’s prediction for Conor McGregor vs. Dustin Poirier 3?
