Ever since Conor McGregor lost to Khabib Nurmagomedov back in October, many have noted McGregor's absent at Straight Blast Gym where he is coached by trainer John Kavanagh. Perhaps his absence at the gym can be explained by his recent retirement which he announced on Twitter earlier this morning. However, news of McGregor's absence at the Ireland gym has been made even more complicated thanks to comments made by MMA-fighter Artem Lobov who is also a part of the Straight Blast Gym family.
“No, Conor is still with us, we are all still a part of SBG,” Lobov told BJPenn.com. “The thing is that many of the SBG fighters that have kind of retired now or whatever, they have opened their own SBG gyms. So we all will often train not only at the main SBG but other SBG gyms. For example, Peter Queally opened SBG Naas and that’s a great facility, so Conor and many of us would often train there. There’s SBG D24 with Paddy Holohan; we’ve got many SBGs now so as a result it may seem sometimes that we’re not all there at SBG HQ, but we still are all a part of SBG.”
Now that Conor has retired, it doesn't seem like he'll be at SBG anytime soon. In his announcement, McGregor said: "I’ve decided to retire from the sport formally known as “Mixed Martial Art” today. I wish all my old colleagues well going forward in competition."