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John Kavanagh knows mental warfare is a real thing, and he wonders how Dustin Poirier will handle that at UFC 257.
On January 23, Poirier will rematch McGregor after they fought in 2014 with the Irishman winning by first-round knockout. For the SBG Ireland head coach, he believes fighting someone who knocked you out early is a tough hurdle to get over mentally.
“I think you can spend a lifetime going to sports psychologists and talking to this person and that person; that’s not going to have been erased from his mind,” Kavanagh recently told TheMacLife. “He knows that he is facing somebody who can shut off his lights very, very rapidly and now is a lot more powerful and a lot more experienced than he was even then, so it’s a tough, uphill battle for Dustin.”
Although Kavanagh knows Poirier has improved since the first fight in 2014, he doesn’t think he can beat McGregor. He knows his pupils striking is too clean and eventually, he expects McGregor to connect on something big and end the fight by KO again.
If McGregor defeats Poirier again, he would be in line to fight for either a vacant lightweight title or get the rematch with Khabib Nurmagomedov.