Conor McGregor’s coach has said the pair have “already” begun training towards a potential UFC fight at the White House in June.
McGregor has made clear his desire to compete at the White House, in an event currently being planned by the UFC, though he is serving an anti-doping ban at this moment in time.
The Irishman was handed the 18-month suspension in October due to three whereabouts failures, but with the ban backdated to September 2024, McGregor will be free to fight again in March.
The former two-weight champion has not competed since July 2021, when he suffered a broken leg, and a 2024 return was thwarted on two weeks’ notice when McGregor broke his toe.
Now, the 37-year-old’s coach John Kavanagh has lifted the lid on McGregor’s training situation, telling Ariel Helwani on Monday: “On our end, we’re 100 per cent in. He’s asked me to basically lay out a programme between now and June of how we’ll ramp up our training.
“He’s showing up again, he’s back in the gym most mornings – early – and he’s just having fun with it… I got a bunch of messages after the show [UFC 322] on Saturday night; he wants to fight everybody! But certainly he wants to get on that [White House] card.
“How it works from a management point of view, that’s between them, so I don’t really get involved in that. But from a training point of view, he’s already tasked me with putting together a team of suitable training partners. We’ll do some of it in the gym, some of it in his house.
“So, he’s fully locked in that we’re gonna be making the walk in six or seven months. Like I said: if it’s Conor’s choice, he’s in. I don’t know how it will work with the UFC, I don’t know how all of that will go.
“I mean, the last one, we were so freaking close until he clipped Tristan [a training partner] on the elbow. So look, we’ve just got to get back there again. I think [Michael] Chandler’s not been quiet about wanting to be that guy.”
Kavanagh was referencing former three-time Bellator champion Chandler, who was due to face McGregor in June 2024, before the latter sustained his broken toe. Ahead of that planned contest, McGregor and the American, 39, were opposing coaches on the UFC’s reality television show The Ultimate Fighter.
“I think the match-up makes sense, I think it’d be a fun one,” Kavanagh continued. “I’d love it. I think they have kind of a bit of a spark between them, they’ve done some stuff together before. I think it’d be a fun fight week, press conference, all of that.
“Style-wise, that kind of shorter, stockier wrestler – he’s faced a few of those in his day. And yeah, I’m in the mindset that that’s what we’re doing, so we’re already beginning our training for that.”
