Coach Kavanagh thinks Conor McGregor will fight Khabib Nurmagomedov before the end of the year, but he'd rather see him fight Nate Diaz.

John Kavanagh has been through a lot with Conor McGregor already, but one fight in particular sticks out in his mind when he looks back at everything they’ve achieved together so far.

Speaking this past Friday during a sitdown with Robin Black, Kavanagh revealed that McGregor’s rematch with Nate Diaz in Aug. 2016 was his favourite fight of all time and that if he had his way, McGregor’s next fight would be to complete their impending trilogy.

“Nate Diaz is my favourite fight, by the way,” Kavanagh said. “If I could pick a fight for the next one it would be that trilogy. I realise it’s not the fan-favourite. “The fan favourite without a close second is the Khabib fight, but for me, it’s the Nate Diaz rematch and I think the Khabib fight is a lot more straight forward.”

Kavanagh went on to explain that Diaz’s ability to take punishment meant that McGregor needed to dig down deeper than ever and that it was satisfying to see him overcome the adversity.

The SBG Ireland head coach even admitted that the victory over Diaz was even more satisfying that raising a UFC title.

“For me, he had already lost to him, it’s a bigger guy, Conor’s skill set is shutting people’s consciousness off and he’s impossible – a freaking Homer Simpson head, he just keeps moving forward,” Kavanagh said. “Conor’s bravery in it [the fight], I’ve seen Conor fight a lot of people that he’s able to walk through and that’s great, it’s fun and you raise a belt, but it doesn’t it doesn’t really excite me that much, not really. “But that fight, if you’d been around him, by the time he’d got backstage [after losing the first Diaz fight], we were watching that night, and then the next morning he was not off the phone until Lorenzo and Dana said that would be his next fight.”

Watch a clip of Kavanagh speaking about McGregor fighting Nurmagomedov: