In the same excerpt from Win or Learn, Kavanagh admitted that the focus was not what it should have been for the first fight, saying: “We won’t be tucking into desserts, driving around in flashy cars and fucking about. Well, maybe there will still be nice cars, but anything that negatively impacts our usual level of preparation will be knocked on the head.”
The desserts reference relates to the fact that in his last fight, instead of meticulously counting every calorie and shrinking his frame to meet the 145-pound featherweight limit, McGregor was able to eat what he liked to make the 170-pound limit. Kavanagh went on to write that cutting weight helped his fighter focus more for the challenge at hand.
McGregor admitted to ESPN that he made some mistakes with his nutrition in the run up to the fight with Diaz, saying: “I think in the last fight [against Nate Diaz in March], I mismanaged my weight. I was working with my nutritionist for the lightweight title fight to make 155 pounds. I was on track. Nine days out from the fight, I’m in phenomenal condition, and then the weight got changed [to 170] and all of a sudden I’m 10 pounds below and I’m like, I don’t need this diet because I need to eat up to the weight. So I threw that out. I disengaged from that. I started eating two steaks a day, two breakfasts. I’d have a coffee and some cookies with that, please, also. I’d be in the gym six to eight hours on fight week. I’ve got bags of energy. I can do this all day. But, my body went into shock. I overtrained and then mismanaged the weight, and it came back to bite me on the ass.”
After the harsh lesson learnt on March 5, McGregor is taking his nutrition for this fight ultra seriously, with performance nutrition consultant George Lockhart part of the team to ensure McGregor’s nutrition is on point for the rematch. Kavanagh expects his fighter to be around 165 pounds for the weigh-in.