Conor McGregor’s long-time coach John Kavanagh has stated his belief that the star broke his leg just moments before his leg sickeningly folded underneath him at the end of the first round of his trilogy fight with Dustin Poirier at UFC 264 this past weekend in Las Vegas.
According to Kavanagh, the clean break of his shin bone happened as McGregor got back to his feet and threw a kick to the body, which appeared to connect with Poirier’s elbow.
“He throws a leg kick, and then he threw a teep,” Kavanagh told Laura Sanko during an Instagram Live Q&A. “That’s clearly where the fracture happened. He threw an aggressive kick, Dustin shelled with the lead hand, and the foot wraps around the elbow in a similar fashion to (Anderson) Silva and (Chris) Weidman. They wrapped their foot around the shin, (McGregor) wrapped his shin around the elbow.”
Kavanagh also noted that McGregor had suffered an ankle injury during training in the weeks before the fight.
“A little bit of that ankle injury had been aggravated during camp,” Kavanagh said. “We got a scan on it. Did that have a small part to play in weakening it? I don’t know. We were (with a doctor) a couple weeks ago to get a scan on the ankle. … There might’ve been something in there. It would seem unusual that a young, healthy, fit man could wrap his foot around an elbow and (break it) without there being something (wrong) there before. You can play those guessing games all day long.”
