Conor McGregor brutally dropped one of his fighters with a body shot just days away from his crunch fight to earn a UFC contract on The Ultimate Fighter.
The Notorious has coached his team to an unprecedented 0-7 losing streak that has promotional boss Dana White questioning how the show can continue into the semi-finals. And perhaps one factor in his latest quick-fire defeat was a sparring session he took in the early part of this week's episode.
After earlier declaring he needed to calm himself down following an altercation with Michael Chandler the previous week, McGregor took on Landon Quinones in what was supposed to be a light sparring drill. However, while showing off a technique to the body he began to up the levels and landed a brutal body kick that dropped his charge, reports The Mirror.
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Quinones appeared eager to stop, but the Dubliner forced him to continue through whatever injury he had suffered. The lightweight prospect actually referred to the sparring session as a "blessing", insisting that he learned a lot from getting a hard round in with a legend of the sport.
"I finally got to go with Conor," he told cameras. "When I went with Conor it was a blessing because I was kind of nervous. I started moving with him and throw my jab, he throws a couple of power shots at me. I'm like 'okay, it's one of those kind of spars'. The same way he thought us in the class he did a lead leg body kick with his toes.
"He hit me with a left body kick right in my liver that kind of shut me down for a minute. When that happened I felt like I learned more in that round than I did in a lot of rounds in my career and I feel like I'm going to take that with me, the way I train is going to be so much different."
Quinones ended up taking on grizzled veteran Jason Knight in the last chance for a McGregor lightweight to pick up a win. In the end, Knight took the win by submission in the opening minute after Quinones struggled in the standup with the famed bare-knuckle boxer.
Eventually he managed to get the fight down with a beautiful double leg, but he put himself straight into Knight's guard. Once they were on the ground the veteran showed his experience in throwing up a triangle out of nowhere to land yet another first round finish for Team Chandler.
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