Conor McGregor Slams Zahabi, Coach Has History Predicting Irishman's Loss

Conor McGregor is not one to take criticism lying down and the Irishman has let it rip at coach Firas Zahabi, after he gave his prediction about the result of a potential rematch between McGregor and Max Holloway.

‘The Notorious’ as McGregor is popularly known beat Holloway by an unanimous decision at Ultimate Fighting Championships (UFC) Fight Night 26 in August 2013. Since the encounter, both the fighters have flourished.

Holloway has won 13 consecutive fights since and has established himself as undisputed UFC Featherweight champion. And as of December 12, 2018, he ranks #4 in the UFC best pound-for-pound fighter rankings.

McGregor in the meantime has gone on to be crowned UFC’s first two-weight title holder when he held both the featherweight and lightweight titles. He also competed in a boxing match against Floyd Mayweather, which he lost and most recently he was submitted by Khabab Nurmagomedov at UFC 229.

Tristar gym’s head coach Zahabi believes Holloway will be the favorite if he has a rematch with McGregor at this point in time as the former would out-punch and out-work the Irishman. The coach of UFC star Georges St-Pierre went on to compare Holloway to McGregor’s long-time rival Nate Diaz while suggesting that the UFC roster has now understood what it takes to beat the former two-weight titleholder.

“If I had to pick Max Holloway vs. McGregor today, I would pick Max Holloway,” Zahabi said, as quoted on bjpenn.com. “I think Holloway has grown leaps and bounds since then. In my opinion, Holloway would out-punch him, outwork him. He would do very much what Diaz did [to Conor McGregor], but more.

“I think McGregor got away with a lot of stuff like the leg kicks against Diaz, but I don’t think he’ll have that against Holloway.

Holloway has the same type of output as Diaz, the same kind of chin as Diaz,” Zahabi added. “He’s more athletic than Diaz, he has more variety in his attacks, he has more kicking, kneeing and elbowing, and his chin is just phenomenal. So I really think he would take it in the later rounds. I think the blueprint for beating McGregor is better understood by the roster.”

McGregor was quick to respond as he called the coach a “twerp” and asked him to step up or “shut your pie”. The Irishman is always up for a confrontation and it will certainly add another angle if UFC does decide to engineer a fight between Holloway and McGregor in the future.

“Hey firaz. Young man afraid to get in and fight, himself. Stop talking about me like you know me, you twerp. You are what age? Why are not in there yourself? Are you not up to it? You rent dorms and hit a clock for a living. Shut your pie, kid,” McGregor wrote on his official Twitter handle.

Twitter handle MMA History Today, went a step further and revealed that this was not the first time Zahabi had called out McGregor and that he has a history of going against the Irishman with regards to his past fights against Diaz and Eddie Alvarez.