THE MAJORITY OF MMA experts expect Conor McGregor to be victorious on Saturday night at UFC 196 and his opponent, Nate Diaz, is one of them.
That’s according to Artem Lobov, McGregor’s main sparring partner, who says Diaz doesn’t believe he can upset the 3/1 odds by overcoming the Irish star this weekend.
Diaz stepped in on short notice to take on McGregor in a welterweight bout following the injury-enforced withdrawal of Rafael dos Anjos last week.
Lobov told The42 that Diaz has been on the radar of McGregor’s camp as a potential opponent for quite a while, and the fight will offer the UFC featherweight champion the opportunity to display his wide array of techniques.
“Nate Diaz is a fight we’ve talked about for a while,” Lobov explained. “We’ve always thought that would be a great fight for Conor to really showcase his skills. This is an opportunity to show a lot more flair, get flashy, show some of the kicks that he’s been working on. I think Nate is perfect for that.
“The volume he throws is really high, he’s always in his opponent’s face, but it’s really hard to do that to Conor. When someone hits as hard as Conor, people usually start to back off very quickly. I expect that from Nate. I expect him to come out aggressive, I expect him to be in Conor’s face from the start, but then he’ll be hit with one or two shots and he’ll be on his bike, backing away.
“He’s just about volume, no power, which means for him to win, he needs to be in there with Conor for round after round. But when you’re in there with Conor, it’s not easy to survive for that long. He’ll hit you with one and you’ll know all about it. It’s game over.
“I just don’t see how Nate can win this fight. He doesn’t have any wrestling to take it to the ground either. And you can see from his interviews, I think he has already accepted that he’ll probably lose this fight. He’s just in it for the money. Fair play to him. He took the fight when no one else wanted to.”
McGregor has only competed at 145lbs in the UFC until now but this time he’s making a significant jump up to 170lbs. Lobov is adamant that the 25lbs increase will result in a bigger and better Conor McGregor entering the octagon at the MGM Grand.
“To go to featherweight every time, he had to lose muscle. He was at the point that he was so big, there was no way of making featherweight by just cutting weight. He actually had to cut out muscle mass leading up to the fight,” Lobov said.
“That’s obviously never a good thing for a fighter because it meant that he was pretty much performing at 70%, whereas now he’s full of food, he’s enjoying himself, he’s happier in training. This was a happy camp. I look forward to seeing how he’s going to look in this fight because he’s been unbelievable in training.”
As for a prediction for Saturday’s bout, Lobov insisted that it will end as soon as McGregor wants it to: “Conor will get the knockout. I honestly struggle to see this one going past the first round, unless Conor decides to mess around and play with him.”
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