Long before Conor McGregor was a two-weight UFC champion, he got 'the sh*t' beat out of him by his future mentor John Kavanagh.
In a story of McGregor's humble beginnings at SBG, Coach Kavanagh remembers back in 2007 when he roughed up future UFC star for stepping out of line.
Not long after Kavanagh had hung up the gloves on his own career, he found himself putting a young McGregor in his place.
In an early training session, McGregor dropped former UFC star Aisling Daly in sparring with a body shot - leading to Kavanagh intervening.
"He wasn’t hitting her in the head or anything, but he just happened to throw a body shot that hit her in the sweet spot, the solar plexus, and put her down," Kavanagh explained in an interview with the Irish Independent.
"I got a little emotional because Ais had been with me a long time and the other guys would look after her. But, this new guy had come in and put her down and my protective nature kicked in.
"I held him down and beat the sh*t out of him. I kept hitting him in the body until he couldn’t breathe and then I looked at him.
"What is it going to be? We can train or we can fight? And he was OK from the next day."
