UFC 264 marked the first time since 2016 that Conor McGregor had gotten two fights in a year. The last was when he rematched Nate Diaz, and he dug deep to pull out a close decision win over the younger Diaz brother to split their series 1-1. On Saturday it was another six month turnaround for a rematch, same as the Diaz fight, and people were wondering whether to expect another hallmark performance from the Irish sports star against Dustin Poirier.
It didn’t work out that way. For the first two minutes of the fight, McGregor and Poirier dueled across the cage and both landed some solid shots. McGregor got caught on his back against the cage with Poirier raining down ground and pound. And then with seconds left, McGregor’s ankle folded in half on itself and the fight was suddenly over: TKO via doctor stoppage, with McGregor scheduled for surgery on Sunday morning for a broken fibula and tibia. Watch the highlights here.
McGregor put out a short statement on Instagram mainly focused on the backlash to the ‘bad guy’ schtick he ran with through fight week. Not much fight analysis there. But later on Sunday McGregor’s head coach John Kavanagh went on his Wimp2Warrior Instagram for a 30 minute chat breaking down the fight and the aftermath.
“He’s in hospital right now, I’ll be heading over after this to check in on him,” Kavanagh said. “You know, it’s a bitter pill to swallow, this sport has the highest highs and lowest lows. We got to take some time to assess what the next move is. Obviously now, rehab and recovery is where it’s at.”
Kavanagh broke down the fight exchange by exchange, revealing that they had focused heavily on cage fighting against Dustin, including a lot of work on guillotines.
“I studied Dustin a lot on the fence, his fight with Holloway for example,” he said. “And I knew Dustin’s head would be there for the guillotine. So we had drilled that a lot. Conor has a very very strong guillotine. A slight tactical error going to the back with it. We drilled getting the finish on the feet or at least it would make the takedown attempt go away and then we’d be back to the center of the Octagon and back to boxing.”
“As somebody who likes guillotines myself, the temptation to try and throw that leg over the back and just get the finish is very very strong, and Conor was the one in there, he must have thought the grip was right and he went for it. That’s what fighting’s about, he went for it. Dustin did an incredible job getting his leg over to the right side of his head to relieve the pressure.”
As for Poirier’s ground and pound, which was severe looking enough for two of three judges to hand him a 10-8 round? Nothing to worry about, according to Kavanagh.
“There was a bit of a struggle to get the head free and then he landed some decent ground and pound,” Kavanagh said. “Most of it on the forearms and the gloves, Conor had no marks, no bruises, swelling, cuts, anything like that. So most of it was parried, but for sure that was Dustin’s moment. He’s obviously winning there in the judges’ eyes. When Dustin stood up, Conor got off some nice upkicks. Some of them whizzed by and others landed.”
“So all and all up until that point, let’s say four and a half minutes, I wasn’t concerned at all, I was actually really really happy. And I knew what I was going to be saying between rounds … I was just going to tell him to keep doing what he was doing with the kicks and try to close a bit heavier this time. So we’d be looking to rather than exchange punches to slide back and left hand like he did on Aldo. Look for those kinds of techniques. Slide back left cross, slide back left uppercut, and kind of let Dustin fall into that kind of open space.”
“At the four and a half minute mark, everything’s gravy. Energy looked good, technique looked good. A few adjustments between rounds and I thought we were on track to getting a finish there or at least keep going, keep the rhythm going for the rest of the fight.”
And then … the leg break.
“You can watch this back, there’s lots of clips on Instagram, where he throws a leg kick, he moves away, and then he throws a teep, that’s one of the techniques we definitely wanted to apply in this fight,” Kavanagh said. “Obviously being a southpaw, that liver side is there so we were looking to teep in that area. … There’s a high danger of catching the elbow, and if you’re watching back you can clearly see that’s where the fracture happened.”
“He very aggressively threw that kick. Dustin shelled with that lead hand, and the foot wraps around the elbow in a similar fashion to Weidman and Silva, they wrapped around the shin. Conor wrapped his shin around the elbow. He stands back on it and you can see the bone almost protrude through the skin. I don’t know how he didn’t fall there. He comes in there, they both exchange crosses, they both miss with their back hands, he goes to step back on it and that’s when there’s that horrifying fold underneath.”
“Again we’ve seen it a handful of times over the years, Weidman and Silva being the big ones. Of course, that’s the end of the contest. So yeah, bitterly disappointed.”
Kavanagh also revealed that McGregor had trouble with the ankle during fight camp, to the point where they took him to a doctor to look at it.
Hoping Chris Weidman has full recovery! Never nice to see. Crazy is the calf kick. No skill, balance, or flexibility, or anything does it take. It’s like watching a punt of a pig skin in the 50s. Up the yard! Crazy how it can go either way. One great for you, or real bad against
He had to have a load of micro fractures in the leg possibly for it snap then. The placement of the kick was nice enough. It wasn’t fully checked. He hit the meat. Enough of it anyway. Had to have been damaged over time without knowing. Wear and tear. Careful on them kicks lads!
“Little bit of that ankle injury had been aggravated during that camp,” he revealed. “We’d gotten a scan on it. Did that have a small part to play in weakening it? I don’t know. … There might have been something in there. It seems unusual that a young healthy fit man can wrap his foot around an elbow without there being something there before. But you know, you can play those guessing games all day long.”
“Credit to Dustin, that’s the way fighting goes. He won. It’s an unfulfilling end to the night. I don’t want to put words in Conor’s mouth, but even if it goes in a way where you just get punched out, you can say ‘All right, you got me.’ This doesn’t feel properly finished, so to speak. Closure, that’s the word I was looking for.”
When asked about McGregor’s classless post-fight comments, Kavanagh rolled his eyes.
“His foot is literally hanging down. It’s a clean fracture of the fibula and tibia, it went straight through, the foot’s hanging down,” he said. “You can only imagine the rush of hormones and what’s going on in your body, the pain, it was on fire. And then someone sits down and sticks a microphone in your face. ‘How are you feeling about the end?’”
“Come on. Come on! When has he ever not been graceful at the end? Let’s get backstage, let’s get a proper assessment from a doctor. Let’s get an x-ray. So I was pretty miffed at the idea of sticking a microphone in his face at that point.”
That leaves us with the big question: what’s next.
“The 24 hour goal for today is to meet with the surgeon and his team after the operation is finished,” he said. “Get their take on it, get their assessment. It’s not til they’ve opened them up and actually looked at the joint and what’s going on in there that they can tell us what the next while is going to look like in terms of rehabilitation.”
But Kavanagh doesn’t think this is the end.
“He truly loves this and it’s hard to imagine him not wanting to come back, not wanting to do this again. Because we really just got this fantastic rhythm. He’s turning 33, which to me is a peaking time where strength meets conditioning and mental and physical and spiritual maturity, everything’s coming together. I think we have a couple of years of this ahead of us.”
GUADALAJARA, Mexico – Canada’s Marina Stakusic fell 6-4, 6-3 to Poland’s Magdalena Frech in the quarterfinals of the Guadalajara Open tennis tournament on Friday.
The 19-year-old from Mississauga, Ont., won 61 per cent of her first-serve points and broke on just one of her six opportunities.
Stakusic had upset top-seeded Jelena Ostapenko of Latvia 6-3, 5-7, 7-6 (0) on Thursday night to advance.
In the opening round, Stakusic defeated Slovakia’s Anna Karolína Schmiedlová 6-2, 6-4 on Tuesday.
The fifth-seeded Frech won 62 per cent of her first-serve points and converted on three of her nine break point opportunities.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 13, 2024.
TORONTO – Alejandro Kirk’s long single with the bases loaded provided the Toronto Blue Jays with a walk-off 4-3 win in the 11th inning of their series opener against the St. Louis Cardinals on Friday.
With the Cardinals outfield in, Kirk drove a shot off the base of the left-field wall to give the Blue Jays (70-78) their fourth win in 11 outings and halt the Cardinals’ (74-73) two-game win streak before 30,380 at Rogers Centre.
Kirk enjoyed a two-hit, two-RBI outing.
Erik Swanson (2-2) pitched a perfect 11th inning for the win, while Cardinals reliever Ryan Fernandez (1-5) took the loss.
Blue Jays starter Kevin Gausman enjoyed a seven-inning, 104-pitch outing. He surrendered his two runs on nine hits and two walks and fanned only two Cardinals.
He gave way to reliever Genesis Cabrera, who gave up a one-out homer to Thomas Saggese, his first in 2024, that tied the game in the eighth.
The Cardinals started swiftly with four straight singles to open the game. But they exited the first inning with only two runs on an RBI single to centre from Nolan Arendao and a fielder’s choice from Saggese.
Gausman required 28 pitches to escape the first inning but settled down to allow his teammates to snatch the lead in the fourth.
He also deftly pitched out of threats from the visitors in the fifth, sixth and seventh thanks to some solid defence, including Will Wagner’s diving stop, which led to a double play to end the fifth inning.
George Springer led off with a walk and stole second base. He advanced to third on Nathan Lukes’s single and scored when Vladimir Guerrero Jr. knocked in his 95th run with a double off the left-field wall.
Lukes scored on a sacrifice fly to left field from Spencer Horwitz. Guerrero touched home on Kirk’s two-out single to right.
In the ninth, Guerrero made a critical diving catch on an Arenado grounder to throw out the Cardinals’ infielder, with reliever Tommy Nance covering first. The defensive gem ended the inning with a runner on second base.
St. Louis starter Erick Fedde faced the minimum night batters in the first three innings thanks to a pair of double plays. He lasted five innings, giving up three runs on six hits and a walk with three strikeouts.
ON DECK
Toronto ace Jose Berrios (15-9) will start the second of the three-game series on Saturday. He has a six-game win streak.
The Cardinals will counter with righty Kyle Gibson (8-6).
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 13, 2024.
CALGARY – Mired in their first four-game losing skid in 20 years, the Calgary Stampeders are going back to Jake Maier at quarterback on Saturday after he was benched for a game.
It won’t be an easy assignment.
Visiting McMahon Stadium are the Eastern Conference-leading Montreal Alouettes (10-2) who own the CFL’s best record. The Stampeders (4-8) have fallen to last in the Western Conference.
“Six games is plenty of time, but also it is just six games,” said Maier. “We’ve got to be able to get on the right track.”
Calgary is in danger of missing the playoffs for the first time since 2004.
“I do still believe in this team,” said Stampeders’ head coach and general manager Dave Dickenson. “I want to see improvement, though. I want to see guys on a weekly basis elevating their game, and we haven’t been doing that.”
Maier is one of the guys under the microscope. Two weeks ago, the second-year starter threw four interceptions in a 35-20 home loss to the Edmonton Elks.
After his replacement, rookie Logan Bonner, threw five picks in last week’s 37-16 loss to the Elks in Edmonton, the football is back in Maier’s hands.
“Any time you fail or something doesn’t go your way in life, does it stink in the moment? Yeah. But then the days go on and you learn things about yourself and you learn how to prepare a little bit better,” said Maier. “It makes you mentally tougher.”
Dickenson wants to see his quarterback making better decisions with the football.
“Things are going to happen, interceptions will happen, but try to take calculated risks, rather than just putting the ball up there and hoping that we catch it,” said Dickenson.
A former quarterback himself, he knows the importance of that vital position.
“You cannot win without good quarterback play,” Dickenson said. “You’ve got to be able to make some plays — off-schedule plays, move-around plays, plays that break down, plays that aren’t designed perfectly, but somehow you found the right guy, and then those big throws where you’re taking that hit.”
But it’s going to take a team effort, and that includes the club’s receiving corp.
“We always have to band together because we need everything to go right for our receivers to get the ball,” said Nik Lewis, the Stampeders’ receivers coach. “The running back has to pick up the blitz, the o-line has to block, the quarterback has to make the right reads, and then give us a catchable ball.”
Lewis brings a unique perspective to this season’s frustrations as he was a 22-year-old rookie in Calgary in 2004 when the Stamps went 4-14 under coach Matt Dunigan. They turned it around the next season and haven’t missed the playoffs since.”
“Thinking back and just looking at it, there’s just got to be an ultimate belief that you can get it done. Look at Montreal, they were 6-7 last year and they’ve gone 18-2 since then,” said Lewis.
Montreal is also looking to rebound from a 37-23 loss to the B.C. Lions last week. But for head coach Jason Maas, he says his team’s mindset doesn’t change, regardless of what happened the previous week.
“Last year when we went through a four-game losing streak, you couldn’t tell if we were on a four-game winning streak or a four-game losing streak by the way the guys were in the building, the way we prepared, the type of work ethic we have,” said Maas. “All our standards are set, so that’s all we focus on.”
While they may have already clinched a playoff spot, Alouettes’ quarterback Cody Fajardo says this closing stretch remains critical because they want to finish the season strong, just like last year when they won their final five regular-season games before ultimately winning the Grey Cup.
“It doesn’t matter about what you do at the beginning of the year,” said Fajardo. “All that matters is how you end the year and how well you’re playing going into the playoffs so that’s what these games are about.”
The Alouettes’ are kicking off a three-game road stretch, one Fajardo looks forward to.
“You understand what kind of team you have when you play on the road because it’s us versus the world mentality and you can feel everybody against you,” said Fajardo. “Plus, I always tend to find more joy in silencing thousands of people than bringing thousands of people to their feet.”
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 13, 2024.
