THE EASIEST FOR Philly McMahon to break down Conor McGregor’s fight against Floyd Mayweather is to bring it back to the sport he knows best.
“We all want him to win but I think it’s a big challenge,” he says. “You just never know because it’s like us playing Tyrone next week, we don’t know how well we’re prepared for it. We don’t know how well our attack is going to work, the same with them. So we can only prepare as best as we can.
“But this fella has so much self-belief that anything can happen. He can just catch him with one shot. He’s definitely the bigger man and has freak power and freak movements. It’s like the Donegal game we played in 2014 – we didn’t know they were going to come out with them sort of tactics.
“Mayweather won’t know what McGregor is going to come out with. His movement is so different to an orthodox boxer so that might (help him).”
McMahon has a big interest in MMA and has trained with McGregor’s pad-man Owen Roddy in the past. He credits the sport with helping his discipline on the Gaelic football field, and that’s an area of his game Tyrone are likely to test further this weekend.
Never a man to sidestep confrontation on the pitch, McMahon admits he would have spent more time in the octagon had it not been for football.
“I’d say I would have, yeah. I like it. I like the challenge of all the different styles within the one sport. And I like that you can channel the aggression into a sport like I do with football as well. But you can actually hit people in that sport (laughs), which is a little bit better.
“I try to do it in the off-season but sometimes it’s hard because of the club championship. In-season, maybe at the start of the year, I do a bit of boxing with a couple of the lads and then I’d do jiu-jitusu. I wouldn’t do MMA, I’d break it up into the specialised parts of it.”
Owen Mulligan, a former lieutenant of Mickey Harte, said yesterday he believes Diarmuid Connolly will come in for some “special treatment” on Sunday. McMahon is another player who may be targeted.
“I’m very lucky that I’ve done MMA a lot so when you’re getting punched in the face and you’re not just reacting, you’re responding to the situation. It just becomes a habit. It’s something I’ve done all my career.
“I’d like to be a fly in the changing room of the opposition. I think it would be a stupid thing to do (target him) because it’s kind of my bread and butter. If there’s an opposition team that are thinking of doing that to me, I’d welcome it. Because I don’t think it works.
“You have to remember, as a defender you’re looking to change the mindset of the forward because all you’re doing is chasing them around the pitch. If they’re thinking of me, whether that’s marking me going up the pitch, or trying to get into my head, or trying to ruffle me up, that’s great. You’re thinking me of them, not the game. That’s the way I see it.
Will he always win those psychological battles against his opponents?
“Mentally? Yeah. Well, I’m equipped to deal with them really well. It’s very hard to say you’re going to win a battle mentally, unless you out perform the player that you’re marking. I would like to think that if a man says something to try to put me off my game, it draws more out of me.
“And if I do the same to the fella I’m marking, it draws more out of him. I want to mark the best players, I want to mark them on top form and I want to see what I’m like. If that draws out a little bit more, great.”
Subscribe to The42 podcasts here:
