UFC middleweight champion Michael Bisping gave both a simple answer and a logical explanation to why Conor McGregor may gas out in fights
Bisping believes that McGregor simply does not put in the road work.
There was little surprise to many observers when the UFC lightweight champion ran out of gas in his bout against Floyd Mayweather Jr. last month. In 2016, McGregor also had issues with fatigue in both of his fights with Nate Diaz, adopting an unconventional method of periodically running away from his opponent in their rematch at UFC 202.
Had McGregor put the hours in running prior to the fight, he may not have had to run inside the cage:
“What people want to know is, what’s Conor’s fucking problem, cause the guy has a problem,” Bisping said on a recent edition of his ‘Believe You Me’ podcast. “He can’t go the fucking distance.”
“It’s kind of an issue, if you can’t go the fucking distance,” Bisping continued. “In the first Nate Diaz fight, what cost him is that he was tired, simple as that. He took a good shot, and that obviously diminishes your gas tank, but he was kind of gassed. And in the rematch, even though he won – and I gave him the rematch, he won the rematch fair and square – but still he was absolutely gassed in that, and it was getting close. The longer the fight went, the more Nate Diaz was getting back into the fight. If you remember, the first round was a white wash. The first round was Conor all over him. The longer the fight went, the more Diaz came into the picture. Same [in the Mayweather fight], the fight started great, but he was fucked! Round seven, eight, nine, he was a shell of himself.”
“It ain’t anything to do with the pace [of the fight]. It’s very, very simply. You know what it is? If you look at the social media, he’s there and he looks great. You’ve got The Mac Life, you’ve got the [UFC] Performance Institute, he’s doing this exercise bag with nine or ten people around him going ‘come on Conor, whoa, yeah, you’re the fucking man, woo!’ Going great. That’s awesome, that’s great, but that doesn’t get you in shape for a fight. You know what you didn’t see? It was him out on the streets running. Running! You’ve got to run! That is the best thing ever for cardio. That is the best thing ever for a fight. MMA or boxing, you have to run. But of course, nobody likes to run. Running’s a pain in the ass, running sucks. Running is lonely […] But you’ve got to run. I don’t know, maybe he did run, but from what I’ve seen on social media, I didn’t see him out there doing any running).” (h/t BJPenn.com).
McGregor did state prior to his rematch with Diaz that he no longer believed the benefits of road work outweighed the risks of joint trouble further down the line. Having gassed out in three of his last fights, however, the Irishman may be forced to rethink his strategy.
