John Kavanagh Backs Conor McGregor’s Explanation for UFC 329 Knee Injury - "We Hadn’t Trained On Dry Ice"

After a five-year wait, McGregor returned to the octagon earlier this year at UFC 329 to run it back with Max Holloway. However, McGregor's return lasted just 69 seconds as he injured his knee while attempting a wild flying kick moments after the opening bell.

He tore the ACL and meniscus in his right knee upon landing and struggled to remain standing. Seeing his condition, referee Mike Beltran stopped the contest, awarding Max Holloway a TKO victory.

Conor McGregor Also Blamed Dry Ice For UFC 329 Loss

Following the loss, Conor McGregor blamed the dry ice used during the walkouts at UFC 329, claiming it made the octagon floor slippery and caused him to slip. He also called for the result to be overturned to a no-contest, with all bets refunded.

Now, his coach has weighed in on what he thinks was the reason "The Notorious" slipped and got injured.

Does John Kavanagh Blame Dry Ice For Conor McGregor UFC 329 Injury?

Earlier today, John Kavanagh told Ariel Helwani that McGregor had practiced the same jumping roundhouse kick at least 50 times on different surfaces, including jiu-jitsu mats, UFC-style canvas, and smooth canvas, and had always landed perfectly. 

"It’s the only thing that makes sense to me because I saw him do it so many times on different surfaces, like we sometimes trained on a sort of jiu-jitsu mat. We sometimes trained on a UFC-style canvas, and we sometimes trained on a smooth canvas…It was all perfect. His landing, his grip, everything was great."

Kavanagh also added that the UFC canvas is usually sticky and provides good grip. Thus, only something like dry ice could make it slippery, as everything about that kick and Conor McGregor's technique was flawless. 

"The UFC canvas is particularly sticky. Like anybody who fights for the first time in the UFC, you’ll always see them coming out with the kind of rashes on their knees and elbows if they’ve been on the ground, because it has this kind of sandy grit to it. So it’s very, very grippy unless you put dry ice on it and you have this like little film of liquid on it, which is the only thing that makes sense to me is that we hadn’t trained on dry ice, and it just seemed to have caught him off guard.

"His foot landed; it just gave. But the actual technique itself, when I watched it in slow-mo, him making that run and then the switch kick position, all of that was exactly the same as what we did in the gym. Nothing was different. It wasn’t overreaching or anything."

Check out John Kavanagh's comments below: (1:00:12)