Exclusive Interview with Javier Mendez

Exclusive with Javier Mendez: Islam Makhachev is an All-rounder - Ian Garry should be careful, Conor McGregor was not himself during UFC return and Islam should clear out welterweight division before moving up for third belt

Speaking to NewBettingSites.uk, Javier Mendez - coach to UFC welterweight champion Islam Makhachev, has set his sights on a gruelling title defence against Ian Garry for his protege and also suggested that Makhachev clear out the welterweight division before thinking about a third strap at Middleweight. He also reacted to Conor McGregor’s bizarre return and shared his shock at the unfortunate turn of events that led to his ACL Injury against Max Holloway.

He also gave key advice to the likes of Tom Aspinall and Cyril Gane on how to beat Jon Jones if that fight ever came to pass and also pondered on former two time UFC Heavyweight champion Cain Velasquez’s chances on a return to the octagon.

Q. Ian Garry is calling this his Jose Aldo moment. Ali Abdelaziz says he needs a reality check. Thoughts?

JM: Between Ian and Ali, it’s good to build the drama and make it interesting for the fans. Garry is doing all the right things and saying all the stuff to make the fight more interesting - without going overboard of course. Regardless of what is being said, they have to get in the cage and fight. I’m fine with trash talk. As long as it has nothing to do with the country, family or religion.

Q. Are there any similarities to Conor vs Khabib

JM: There are zero similarities to Conor vs Khabib. Unless Ian starts disrespecting family and religion or country, but I don’t see him doing that or Islam doing it either. It’s a fight between them and I feel like if they want to include me and Khabib that’s fine. We are fair game, we are trainers and part of the team. They should leave everyone else alone though.

Q. How do you neutralize someone that moves as well as Ian Garry?

JM: We will have to see on the night. We can always have it in our head what we’re going to do but if suddenly the plans change and we can accomplish what we said we are going to do, then what? We have to see what he gives us and then take it from there. We have planned for everything we have to. The good thing about Islam is that he is good at everything. Kicking, boxing, defense, offense, grappling and submissions - you name it, he has got it. We’re prepared for everything. Let’s see how well he can stand with us and how well he can stay off the ground with us as well. We’re going to have to test it all.

Q. Ian Garry is very mentally strong. How much does that count for Ian in terms of giving him a fighting chance?

JM: Ian Garry’s mental game is huge. That’s what my book is about. It is all about mental strength and how you can do anything with mental strength if done right. Proper planning and execution with the right formula. It can’t just be ‘’I can beat Gorillas but I am a little ant,’’ it's impossible. You have to be realistic. Realistic expectations create real results.

I’ll give you an example. When Usman Nurmagomedov fought Paul Hughes in the PFL- Khabib and I weren’t there for the camp at all and I didn’t get to see Usman until that day we walked into the locker room.

The first thing I said to him was that this would be a tough fight because Paul doesn’t believe that you can beat him. You need to make sure you stick it to this kid otherwise he will stick it on you. That was a big wake up call for him because no one had told him that before.

The mental strength to override things like that is really tough. If you saw Hughes that night. He was very much in the fight. However in the second fight, he was broken because Usman beat him everywhere. I made sure Usman knew where all the key points were at the end of the day. Paul tried everything to beat Usman but failed, he was too overconfident.

Q. What is your official prediction for the fight?

JM: The fight will go the full five rounds. We will win all five rounds. That will never change - never. I’m not doing my fighter justice by putting something that is not realistic in my mind. It’s not to say that Islam can’t finish the fight earlier, but I just don’t want to do that. Look at what happened to Ilia Topuria. He predicted all types of outcomes for his fight and the next thing we know, he is sitting there with a broken orbital bone and is bleeding everywhere. The bottom line is that what he said and what happened are two different things. Ilia Topuria wore that fight all over his face, whereas Justin Gaethje didn’t.

I don’t want to fall into those traps as a fighter, you're always having to dig yourself out. Don't feel it's a gravy train. Maybe it worked for him most of the time, but that one didn't.

That's the way I like to get my fighters to think. You can't think every fight's going to be easy. They're not. If you think they're all going to be hard, and you train for them like they're super, super hard, maybe you'll make it easy because you trained for them. Once you don't respect that individual, you gotta remember, it's only you and him. God's going to give it to somebody, and it's going to be him or you. So the odds are not as big as you think they are. The odds are more likely he can beat you on any day.

Q. You are always an advocate for your fighters to be in the biggest fights possible. Was there some disappointment when Ilia Topuria lost as he and Islam Makhachev started to have a budding rivalry?

JM: Islam Makhachev vs Ilia Topuria is lost at the minute. We have been here before where one fight looked good and then all of a sudden it didn’t.

The Conor fight looked good because we were talking about the first ever three-peat with UFC titles. So that legacy fight would have been a big thing for all of us. I wanted to win that for myself as a coach. We like excitement, and to be involved in big historical fights like that is big for us. Being involved in a fight of that magnitude is important, but the most important thing is to keep winning and take what comes. We can't expect things and be upset that things fall apart, because that's the fight business. Things go wrong when you think they're supposed to go right and they go right when you think they're supposed to go wrong.

Q. If Islam beats Ian Garry, should he go for the triple crown and fight Sean Strickland for the UFC Middleweight belt?

JM: I think he should clear out the division, I think that's what Islam wants. but if Islam says, no, I want a Triple Crown, then I'm going to go with him. I'm always going to go with what the fighter wants. If the fighter wants that, then that's what I want. Islam doesn't talk past Ian Gary. He doesn't even talk about Ian Gary, but he won't talk past them. If you ask him the question. He may answer it, but he just generally stays to what he needs to do.

Q. How would Islam Makhachev translate to Middleweight?

JM: For a welterweight, he's not the bigger welterweight, but he's not the smaller either. For a middleweight, he'd be a smaller middleweight, so I don't know. He'd have to put on another 10 pounds of muscle.

For me to feel comfortable, and right now, he's put on a good 10 pounds since, lightweight, so It's all good. Now, if he could put on another 10 pounds, and it's usable muscle, then we can talk another story.

There's no point in even thinking about it. We need to focus on the welterweight division and dominate there and get used to it. That's what I think. He may think differently, though.

Q. Some fans say Max Holloway would get dominated by Islam. Is that disrespectful to Max or just the reality of the fight?

JM: Well, it's not disrespectful, because stylistically Max is not a hard fight for us, if we can implement what we want to do, which is take him to the ground. If we decide we're not going to take him to the ground then I think everybody's going to be in for a shock, because on the stand-up, Max is formidable with anybody. But you have to be able to prevent Islam from taking you down, and I don't think Max has worked on that aspect of his game. Let's face it, Max is a true warrior, he'll fight anybody, he doesn't care. He jokes around with Daniel Cormier all the time, but in all fairness, I think he would fight DC and I think he'd have fun doing it, too. So, don't question anything about what Max wants, and don't count him out. That's what I say.

Q. What did you make of Conor McGregor, was he a shell of the fighter he once was?

JM: The Conor that we saw was different. The first thing that got me is his mohawk, and I'm like, what? That struck me as a little odd. But then he didn't have that relaxed swagger. So I didn't know, I didn't know what to think and then when he did that flying kick I went, what the hell? Then I saw his leg buckle as he landed on it, throwing that kick, and then I'm like, what the hell's going on here?

He was in the back room throwing the same kick, and he had no problem, zero problem with it, so he was doing great. But then he goes to the walkout, and then he's taking his shoes off, and you notice there was something wrong there.

They pointed it out to me, and I go ‘’man, I didn't even pick that up.’’ Who knows? Did he hurt himself on that kick, or did he hurt himself at the warm-up, I don't know. Only his team knows the answer. All I know is that it wasn't him that I saw. I saw somebody that wasn't comfortable when they showed it right before they're about to go. He looked very tense. He didn't look relaxed at all to me. Very tense. And I was confused, to be honest with you. I had no idea.

Q. What about his kick that started the fight?

JM: I would strongly advise my guys to never do something like that. That's a Hail Mary type thing. If he would have landed, it would have been the greatest thing, like Anthony Pettis jumping on the cage and round-kicking. Look how famous it made him. It put him on the Wheaties cereal box! So something like that, if you can pull it off, is fantastic, but the likelihood of you pulling it off is not that big. If you practice it a lot, like it appears like he was, it can happen and it can throw somebody off, but generally, it's a waste of energy.

Q. Do you think Cain Velasquez will return to the Octagon ?

JM: He's not over the hill, I stand by those comments. He can do some damage, 100%. He still can come in there, and he can win the title, if that's what he chose to do. Over the past couple of days he's not into that. He just may just start working out for himself. Personally,

I don't see that desire to fight in him. He hasn't mentioned it to me. If that happens

it wasn't something I was informed about, that he wants to fight, but I'm sure he's being offered deals all the time. I don't know what his deal is with the UFC, if he's still on contract with them, because, some people, for the rest of their lives, they're going to be bound to the UFC. so he may be in the same situation, where if he's going to do something, he has to get permission from the UFC, but I don't know that for a fact.

He's that good. A lot of things that happened to him in his career were the result of my negligence. Everybody had a part in his negligence and what happened to him. This guy should be the greatest heavyweight of all time, considered to be one of the greatest of all time.

But mismanagement on my part and everybody's part. We all had a little bit of contribution to why he wasn't the greatest he should have been. He's still a great one, but not the greatest. He should have been the greatest of all time.

Q. Do you think if Cain came back and found the motivation - he could beat Tom Aspinall and take the title?

JM: It is difficult to predict what Cain would do, as it is all hypothetical. Tom Aspinall is a highly respected and talented heavyweight. While Cain certainly has the ability to beat anyone, I won't definitively say he would defeat Aspinall or Jon Jones. I will simply say that he possesses the fighting skills to compete at that level.

Q. You prepared Daniel Cormier on multiple occasions for John Jones. What advice would you give to the likes of Tom Aspinall, Cyril Gahn, or Francis Ngannou if those fights ever materialise?

JM: The number one thing you have to do is you have to take it to Jon Jones. You can't let him dictate. If you let him dictate, he's going to tear you apart.

He's a master strategist. He's not an easy guy to prepare for. Not easy at all. At all. He's so good at everything he does. He's the reason why,

Gable Stevenson's going to be one of the great ones in the heavyweight division, because of his tutelage to him. So, to not respect someone like Jon Jones is very, very stupid, because

He's good everywhere. I just have to say to anybody that's going to fight him, you better be ready for the biggest dogfight of your life, because you're not going to have an easy fight, and you're not going to have an easy time with him, no matter what it is.

You're not going to have an easy time striking with him, you're not going to have an easy time trying to take him down. If you do take him down, you're not going to have an easy time on the ground with him. He's just a total pitcher, this guy. He refuses to lose to anybody, and a guy like that is very difficult.

What guy do you know would pull away from a Chael Sonnen fight when he had Belfort as his opponent, and then he refused to fight Chael Sonnen because he didn't prepare for a wrestler of that magnitude? That's a guy that will never risk losing. So, to me, I thought it was, wow, you just got gifted an easy fight. You got a guy that is not going to be able to out-wrestle you because of his size difference, and he's not where your level of striking is. I thought it was an easy fight for him, but he refused to take that fight, remember? He refused that fight. He wasn't ready for that type of stress and that's who he is. He won't take a fight unless he knows he's ready for it, so he's a very difficult person to prepare for, for anybody.

Q. Where did Alex Pereira go wrong in his conquest for his 3rd UFC title?

JM: Alex Pereira was too heavy and too flat-footed. To go up against Cyril Gane - who is like a karate point fighter, an MVP-type guy - he’s in and out of the pocket a lot. You can't be 250-something pounds, it's something you're not used to, and to go up against a guy that moves that elusively, Cyril was in and out too quick and Alex couldn't get to him. He couldn't get off his punches, because the guy was away from him, all he could really do was kick at him.

Gane got all this kick out of him, so it was just a matter of time before Cyril was able to land, and he did.

He should have been lighter, maybe 243 or 237 lbs or somewhere in that general area, because he has the power. He needed to be more elusive with the weight. That's my opinion.

Q. What do you make of the criticism wrestlers often get in the UFC? Should fans and fighters get over it?

JM: When wrestlers stalemate each other on the ground, just holding on for dominance without advancing, establishing positions of power, raining down strikes, or hunting for submissions, it gets boring for everyone. I find it boring too. However, that is the problem of the fighter who is being held down. That control is their opponent's advantage, and the person on the bottom needs to figure out how to escape.

If you don't like it, do something about it. If your opponent views wrestling as their best path to victory, then that represents the weak piece on your chessboard. You must learn how to handle a skilled wrestler because this is MMA—it isn't just striking, wrestling, or jiu-jitsu; it is everything combined. Fighters must practice every aspect of the game to the highest level because they will encounter completely well-rounded opponents who can do it all, like Jon Jones or Islam Makhachev.

Usman Nurmagomedov is another example—he is dangerous because he is highly skilled in every single area. You have to be incredibly careful with well-rounded fighters like that and ensure all your training is done properly, otherwise they will cause you serious problems.