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Robin Black is a commentator and an analyst for Fight Network in Canada, his technical breakdowns are some of the best on the internet and are well worth a visit.

Known for his excitement there was no change when we chatted three weeks ago about a host of different topics including Conor McGregor and mental preparation.

The first thing that unsurprisingly came up was the ‘champ champ’ McGregor. Off the back of the historic UFC 205 and his win of Eddie Alvarez Robin was expecting something like the outcome without hoping for what was in store for Eddie.

“I expected something like that. But I didn’t want to quite accept it because as well as being an enormous Conor McGregor fan I’m also an enormous Eddie Alvarez fan. I wasn’t cheering for him to destroy his opponent, but it’s what I expected to se. He’s just getting better and better at the act of getting better.”

The big thing that he took from the fight was the way that Conor is improving the ability to improve.

“He’s optimising his ability to improve. He’s improving his ability to improve. And that’s the scary part. People have to admit that the game he is playing is modern and it’s a winning game and now that the many have been denied it for 2-3 years. Now they are 2-3 years behind if they had just accepted it and started preparing for it. Now they are years behind and he is accelerating it in his ability to improve and it’s a scary time if you’re part of the old crew who preferred it the old way.”

Before McGregor made history, Khabib Nurmagomedov ran through Michael Johnson like he was nobody and a potential showdown between “The Notorious” and Khabib, is the fight to make for Black.

“(Khabib) is the fight I’m most interested in. Tony (Ferguson)  I’d love to see the fight. Tony would be a challenge in his own right because he’s less predictable. There are times when Tony doesn’t know what Tony is going to do so how are you supposed to know what Tony’s going to do.

“I like that aspect of it. He has some of the same tools that Conor has. The way he uses space and stuff, but I think Khabib is the harder test. As Conor and Wonderboy and Dominick Cruz and Demetrious Johnson have been evolving this ability to create space and maintain space that when you come in and try to infringe on their space they penalise you for doing it. They either maintain it, increase it or hurt you as you do it in differing times and ways and rhythms and that’s super cool and everybody’s going to have to figure that out because if you don’t you’re one of the old kind of fighters, you’re an old kind of car and there’s a new sports car.”

The challenge for McGregor is the ground game of Nurmagomedov as Johnson found out at Madison Square Garden.

“Khabib and much like Damien Maia, I know ones a wrestler and ones a jiu-jitsu guy, but those words don’t mean shit anymore. These words are ancient terminology now. They are irreverent to our conversations. They are both very dominant on the ground and they both seem to have this predatornaturally ability to take space away on the ground. They get a hold of you and then they put you down in ways that are unlike what you are familiar with.

“In one camp we have the special manipulators, creating space and penalising you for charging in and forcing you to be uncomfortable and are very hard to hit and on the other hand you have taking space away and dominating you and we haven’t really seen those two things at that level compete with each other yet. So these two differing universes and Conor McGergor v Khabib is when we finally get to see how that works. What works and what doesn’t work.

“You’re seeing the cycle of history repeat itself. You were a boxer and I was a wrestler. I come in and danger is you hit me on the way in and if you don’t knock me out I take you down. And then we went through all these different incarnations and now everybody has those skills. But in the end the danger for Khabib is the coming in and closing that space. Conor’s really good at making people pay for that and he could lay him out with one punch, but if he doesn’t then he’s in for a rough night.”

McGregor’s trash talk is one of his biggest weapons, but whether or not it’ll have an affect on Khabib is a different story.

“Well you start standing. If I’m Khabib and I start by saying I’m going to take him down I start from so far away trying to take him down the first thing I need to do is to close space. So that’s an issue. Can Conor McGregor, from playing with language and posturing and all the other things he does make Khabib try to strike with him. Possibly.

“It used to be that 100% of all McGergor opponents he had ever faced he had successfully fucked with their brains. 100%. But Nate Diaz made it not 100% percent. So now it is proven that it is possible not to be affected by him so that opens a little window of possibility that Khabib could not be affected by it. Not speaking his language fully didn’t seem to help Jose Aldo much.”

Another big question is if the fight will actually go ahead. There have been a lot of accusations that McGregor runs from opponents or that the UFC protects him, Black disagrees.

“A lot of people are saying ‘oh they’ll protect him or oh he’s running from him’. There’s no truth to that for a number of reasons. 1. Conor McGregor losing is the best thing that could happen for the UFC. You see what that second Diaz fight did? If Conor McGregor took a beating the UFC would be delighted because he’d want to fight Khabib again and all the ‘I told you so’s’ v all the you crazy Irish people with the he’s our guy. It would be so big. There’s no ‘protect McGregor’ the money to be made is in letting him have that fight.

“Every piece of evidence that we have ever seen about Conor McGregor suggests that the way he’s obsessed with growth and constant improvement and he’s a smart guy. He knows that the obstacle is the way so the toughest fight that he can find is the most sure fire way to achieve the greatness you are after. To become better. Whether you are forced to develop your game to up it and win or to up it, still lose and up it again this guy’s looking for full actualisation in looking for what his full potential is. This is why he’s so good. He’s seeking to be as great as he can be and the way to do that is to fight Khabib.

“Now he has other influences. So if it was the search for growth and the search for actualisation he’d fight Khabib, but he has other interests too. He likes money and Khabib may not provide that so that may distract him from that singular goal. But I think we will eventually see that fight. I like the fight. I tend to think that John Kavanagh right now is on a level. Like a real mental, physcological, philosophical problem solving and I would be leaning pretty heavily towards McGregor and I say that having done this Khabib breakdown. But I still tend to think that the danger in that space is so great that it’s not like he’s going to get him down on the first try. It gets tougher and tougher.”

Moving on to the second title fight from UFC 205 we had a look back at Tyron Woodley vs. Stephen “Wonderboy” Thompson. To Robin it was a fight that showed the evolution  of both fighters.

“Woodley is evolving and he showed a lot of that in the Wonderboy fight. His understanding of the game when he fought Wonderboy, which in my opinion was clearly a draw, I expected him not to be able to handle the space and he did. That was growth. Woodley a year earlier would have lost that fight. They both learned a lot from each other after the first fight. The question is who learned more and who can adapt more.

“Wonderboy’s entire world for the last decade has been about beating this style of fighter. Whatever knowledge and information and tactics he has developed that has worked against Jake Ellenberger and Johny Hendricks worked when it worked when it worked against Woodley, but Woodley made changes based on his understanding, but I think the base of root knowledge that Wonderboy has that he will build on is broader to beat Woodley rather than vice versa.

“So I think that Wonderboy improves more from the first meeting, but I think the risks are exactly the same. We knew going into the fight if Woodley takes you down you’re in shit and if he hits you with his right hand you’re in shit. And in round one he took him down and put him in shit and in round four he hit him with his right hand and put him in shit. The challenges and the risks stay the same and get tougher, but I think by acclimatising himself to it and his broad base to fighters like that I think Wonderboy gets more out of it than Woodley does.”

A huge bonus for Wonderboy was having former Middleweight champion Chris Weidman in his camp to recreate the wrestling of Woodley. After the TKO loss to Yoel Romero earlier on the same card Wonderboy may have to live without Weidman for the rematch. Which led us to the discussion people saying this is what you have to do when there are unfavourable changes they should be saying how you do it.

“A lot of times people are looking at the what. ‘What do I have to do? Oh I have to block the leg kicks or we need to wrestle more.’ Most people would be like I know what to do the question is how do I do it. The HOW. Part of the how was what he trained with Chris. The environment he trained with Chris and what he got out of training with Chris. You remove that and you are removing some of the how of his wrestling.

“His answer is multiple choices. A). Well no big deal I’m a good wrestler. B). we need to replace Chris who is 1. We trust, 2. Is this high level 3. Cares about us enough to give us the work that Chris did, which is tough because Chris is his brother in law. The way you’re thinking about this is good because we’re not just removing a wrestler we’re removing a wrestler that cares about us. He’s family, he’s an alli and that’ll matter. You have to address that, but all these things are obstacles and in fighting and life you have to overcome obstacles.”

Moving ahead to the action at UFC 206 Robin sees the unpredictability of Max Holloway being the deciding factor against Anthony Pettis.

“The Pettis fight is crazy. It’s hard to imagine how you prepare for Max Holloway now. Now Anthony is super intelligent and the people around him like Duke Roufus are super intelligent, but Max is super deceptive. Like you think you know what he’s doing, but he’s sliding in and out. Now they’ll pick up on all that stuff, but he’s still becoming a category of one the way he fights long with his aggression tied in. He’s a tough fight. But Pettis is a tough fight if he’s tuned in.

“With Pettis it’s all about him. If he pushes himself to his max. The loss to RDA it seemed to me that hard work beat talent. When he loses somebody outworked him. When he wins he’s outworking them and he’s more talented. I don’t know if I’ve ever picked against Pettis, but watching Holloway and his past fights this might be one of those times.”

We also talked at length about the original headliner the cancelled UFC Light-Heavyweight Championship between Daniel Cormier and Anthony Johnson.

“This fight is just a do over. If AJ hits you we know what happens if DC gets to him and can get him down we know what happens. AJ’s ability is he doesn’t get hit much and he doesn’t get taken down much because he’s so busy destroying people that people don’t pause and look at his defensive systems. He doesn’t get hit much and he doesn’t get taken down much and when he was taken down against DC he was over aggressive after he hurt DC.

“I did a breakdown with both guys and I showed them footage of each other and talked to them about it. He won’t make that mistake again. If he’s patient it’s a really hard fight for DC. If you go back and watch a patient AJ against Phil Davies. Phil tried to take him down 15 times got him down half a time. That guy is hard to fight and if that guy shows up it’s a scary one for Dan.”

Finally we had a look at the mindset of fighters and in the case of Rumble of how they need to change. Not what they need to change. How they change it.

“The challenge is if we decide we believe what Dan said and there’s good evidence that he breaks and he broke against Vitor Belfort many years earlier. Then you have to acknowledge that and work on that. The only way you can work on that is if you say there’s some truth to this. I have broken. It’s hard for a man to do that. It’s not what we were looking for when we signed up to fight. We were looking for greatness. We were not looking for our weaknesses to be shown to us.

“But if you acknowledge that you can begin to work on that, but I showed him the face to face with Alexander Gustafsson and Gustafsson looked away and Anthony Johnson said that’s when I knew I had him. I knew that he wasn’t there that he wasn’t fully in it. Then I showed him DC and AJ actually looked away and I paused it and I said what were you feeling there? Because I wanted him to see that if you’re saying that Gustafsson and the way he was expressing himself in that moment and you could see weakness. You see your very same mannerisms reflecting in Gustafsson. You have to see it here. And he said ‘yeah I just wasn’t myself I don’t know what it was’. And I said ‘how will we prepare to be at our best no matter what?’ And he said ‘it’s the outcome man. I don’t want that outcome again’.

“I’ve worked with a mind coach and with a professor from the British University of Colombia and they all say that the outcome has nothing to do with it. You can’t fix the moment by saying I don’t want the same outcome. You fix the moment by changing your process, by changing how you are and addressing the realities. So I didn’t love seeing AJ say oh man I don’t want the same thing to happen so I’ll be ready. He might be. And if you are and you win then great. But you can’t be sure of that, but what you can be sure of is how to get the best out of you and prepare and train it like a muscle train it like an art and then be at your best because you control that, but that takes work and you only do the work if you acknowledge you have a flaw and I don’t know if he’s doing that or not I’m really not sure. I hope so because then we get the best fight possible.”

An amazing conversation with one of the great minds in MMA. Enjoy the hostilities my friends.