John Kavanagh says he’d be ‘very surprised’ if McGregor does not fight again

Conor McGregor's coach John Kavanagh has said that he'd be very surprised if the former two-weight world champion does not fight again.

McGregor announced his retirement from the sport of MMA last month, seemingly shelving plans to fight this summer, as he toured the United States from Boston to Chicago to Miami and more. Kavanagh said on The Late Late Show on Friday that he bumped into McGregor at a local event recently and it was the first time he had seen him in months.

"He was just back from the States, he was in Miami training," said Kavanagh. "I had an amateur show on Friday night and he showed up. I didn't even know he was going to be there and he showed up. It was the first time I'd seen him in a while, we'd a couple of text exchanges but we hope to sit down in the next week and see what the future is. "I hadn't seen him in months. He'd been in Miami taking a break, but also training, but physically I hadn't seen him in quite a while."

McGregor has fought just once since his Lightweight championship win over Eddie Alvarez in 2016, a four-round mauling at the hands of Khabib Nurmagomedov in October of last year, but Kavanagh said that he'd be very surprised if the 30-year-old did not make another return to the cage.

"Training MMA is fun but training for professional fighting is very, very tough. It's very tough on the body. Usually, your motivation for those things is to win a world title or to make some money; and he's done those things. "I found it hard to see what was going to motivate him to keep going and keep putting himself through that grind. I have seen a bit of a resurgence in his passion and his love for it and I think if the right contest comes along, something that is interesting to him, something that will get the crowd going, I'd be very surprised if he doesn't fight again and it could even be this summer."