Conor McGregor is reportedly set to earn close to €100m from fighting Floyd Mayweather Jr next month — and the Dubliner’s financial acumen is rubbing off on his team. McGregor’s coach John Kavanagh has made almost €500,000 in the past two years from his Dublin gym operation, newly filed accounts show.
Kavanagh, who owns the Straight Blast Gym on the Naas Road, a 10,000 sq ft space inside a former warehouse, will be in McGregor’s corner when the UFC star fights Mayweather.
The Walkinstown facility, described as the nerve centre of ultimate fighting in Ireland, has about 500 regular users with several hundred more in affiliated gyms around the country. The barn-like structure is decorated with graffiti and murals of martial arts fighters and samurai warriors.
Ultimate Fighting Centre Ltd, Kavanagh’s company, had €477,630 in the bank at the end of October 2016, after €178,000 was paid to staff and €70,000 to the company’s two directors, Kavanagh and his sister, Ann Mulligan. The operation has proved so successful that Kavanagh, who began training mixed martial arts fighters in a disused garage in Phibsboro, has said he is considering moving to a larger premises.
“We’ve only been there around three years and we’ve filled up where we are,” he said recently.
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Kavanagh, a former engineering student from Rathfarnham, began learning martial arts because he was bullied as a teenager. A decade ago he began coaching mixed martial arts (MMA), with one of his early students being McGregor, then a plumber’s apprentice.
“People wait for the story of the cloud splitting and stuff like that, but Conor just walked into my gym as a student. He was 16,” he has said. “I did notice right away he had certain traits. He was loud, he was funny, he was witty, he was charismatic.”
While he coaches several professional fighters, most of the members of Straight Blast Gym are solely interested in improving their fitness rather than becoming MMA stars. “I’ve got fighters from all over the world, but more important than that are just the regular people who want to come in and they’re not interested in running on a treadmill or lifting weights — they want to use MMA as a vehicle to improve themselves,” said Kavanagh.
The gym’s popularity has also attracted celebrities eager to see where McGregor honed his fighting skills. Last weekend Kavanagh posted pictures on social media of the Coldplay lead singer Chris Martin, who worked out at the gym.
Kieran McGeeney, Armagh’s captain when the county won its only All-Ireland title in 2002, is another former Kavanagh student, and regularly brought the Kildare team to work out at the trainer’s gym when he managed the county between 2007 and 2013.
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Kavanagh, 40, who almost became a maths teacher before turning MMA into a full-time career, will be in McGregor’s corner when the Dubliner fights Mayweather Jr on August 26 in Las Vegas. Despite the bookmakers making Mayweather, undefeated as a professional fighter, the heavy favourite, Kavanagh has talked up his protégé’s chances despite McGregor never having boxed professionally before.
“He is not trying to win Wimbledon. It’s not that different,” he said. “His understanding of range, his understanding of how to move around is excellent.”
Kavanagh was in Irish fighter Charlie Ward’s corner last year when his opponent, the Portuguese fighter João Carvalho, died soon after the bout. While he said he was “devastated” at the time, Kavanagh later said that it was a “statistical inevitability” that someone would get hurt. “It’s the same if you run enough boxing matches or rugby matches or whatever,” he said.
Fans hit back at Fighter’s ‘racist’ taunts
Almost 1,000 people have signed a petition calling on Conor McGregor to apologise for making allegedly racist remarks in the build-up to his fight against Floyd Mayweather Jr next month.
Anti-Racism Network Ireland claims that McGregor, who is glorified in the mixed martial arts world for his pre-fight “trash talking”, has “repeatedly used racist language, jokes and allusions” in his press conferences.
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“It is time that we tell him that Irish people don’t find this acceptable nor a good example for our young people,” states the campaign.
McGregor goaded Mayweather Jr at successive press conferences in Los Angeles and Toronto last week, calling on the boxer to “dance for me, boy”. McGregor also referred to “dancing monkeys” when talking about a scene from the film Rocky III set in a black boxing gym.
Anti-Racism Network Ireland said McGregor had in the past described Latino fighters as “cholos” and “cockroaches”, and had also threatened “to turn their favelas into sweatshops”.
“It is important to tell Conor McGregor that racism is not a joke, it is not banter and that Ireland as a nation does not tolerate racism, in sports or elsewhere,” states the campaign.
McGregor’s clumsy denials of racism have so far failed to quell the controversy. During an interview in New York on Thursday, McGregor said he was “half black from the belly button down” and pointed out that he was a fan of rap music.
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“I mean I’m coming out rapping Blade and Biggie. I’m giving respect,” he said. Fans hit bacK at Fighter’s ‘racist’ taunts