Donald 'Cowboy' Cerrone's best chance of beating Conor McGregor is to take the Dubliner to the canvas, according to former UFC champion Georges St-Pierre.
The welterweight bout is set for Las Vegas on Saturday week as McGregor returns to the UFC for the first time since he was choked out by Khabib Nurmagomedov 15 months ago, the Mirror reports.
The Notorious one is the odds-on favourite to prevail over the fan favourite, but St-Pierre believes Cerrone is more than capable of causing an upset.
"If it’s a quick fight it’s going to be McGregor," he said. "If it’s a long fight it’s going to be Cerrone.
"[It] depends if Cerrone comes and tries to grapple because he has a very good ground game, his ground game is very underrated.
"I've trained with him before, he has good takedown; he is very explosive to shoot the takedown. People don’t know that because he doesn’t use it much [but] he used it against Patrick Cote.
"If he does that, to weather the first couple minutes of the storm and McGregor’s powerful left hand, I think he can get it.
"I think if he wrestles in round one he has a good chance to win but, if he tries to play a boxing and karate game with McGregor, McGregor will knock him out… it's hard.
"The odds are more towards McGregor but Cerrone can pull this off too. It’s at 170, [it’s] Cerrone [advantage] I think. McGregor looks big. I don’t know enough about McGregor but, from what I’ve seen is he is like a sniper.
"When you fight a sniper, you need to move, you need change levels, you need change angles, change [the] distance and I don’t know if Cerrone will do that.
"He is known to be a slow starter as usual, so if he doesn’t start right away hard with the speed he is going to get caught."
And McGregor has linked up with team-mate Dillon Danis in Las Vegas ahead of his fight with Donald Cerrone on Janruary 18th.
The Dubliner returns to the cage at UFC 246 when he takes on 'Cowboy', and it seems that he's taken the opportunity to do some last-minute training with Danis.
Bellator star and long-time friend od McGregor Danis is based in the US preparing to take on Kegan Gennrich in California on January 25th.
Sharing a picture of the two training, Danis said: "2 of amerikaz most wanted".
It comes as McGregor showed off his ripped physique ahead of his highly anticipated bout against Donald 'Cowboy' Cerrone .
The Notorious , 31, took to Instagram to share pictures of his toned body with his 33.3 million followers as he gears up for his return to the octagon in less than two weeks.
Accompanying the post was an ominous caption which simply read: "11 days"
Several fellow MMA athletes and fans commented on the post sharing their excitement for the upcoming event.
Swedish MMA fighter Samuel Ericcson said: "LET'S GO".
Meanwhile gym guru and influencer Joey Swoll dubbed him a "champ" in his comment.
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