Conor McGregor is a decent grappler however in the bjj world he is usually linked to Dillon Danis who found his notoriety through association. One way or another McGregor is ready to train Gi again.
The BJJ brown belt has competed multiple times Gi and No Gi in international BJJ competitions (IBJJF Europeans, London No Gi Open) and has had decent results.
Many MMA fans have been critical of Conor’s ground game since we rarely see it and he has been submitted 3 times already in MMA.
In the past, he has even trained with Eddie Bravo.
Eddie Bravo talks about about Conor McGregor’s ground game and grappling is his willingness to learn and evolve.
“It’s a good sign, and I saw it first hand, he has the mentality to be really really good at jiujitsu,” Bravo said about McGregor.
“I’m teaching class one day, and someone was punching a bag in the corner. I look over, and said ‘is that Conor McGregor hitting the bag in my gym?”
“So I go back to class, and within 3 minutes I see him on the mats and said ‘where are your best guys?’ I hooked him up with my best guys, and he just kept wanting to go with my best guys,” he continued. “Nobody does that! No UFC guys do that. A lot of them come and say hi, and some of them train, but when it comes to rolling, they didn’t want to roll.”
“Famous UFC fighters don’t generally train — and I generally understand where they come from. They train in some gym where they don’t know guys, and there will be cameras out, and maybe they’ll go ‘I just tapped out this guy from the UFC!’ Guys from the UFC, they don’t want that shit.”
“That showed me that he has the mentality, that he’s not afraid to grapple and train with whoever to improve his grappling. That’s huge! From that point on, I’m like ‘that’s why he’s good!’ He’s looking to evolve.”
McGegor has been quote as saying the following about his Gi bjj training:
“I will usually work towards the temple, but when training in the Gi, it is fun to work towards the limbs or the neck instead.”
Famed MMA coach Firas Zahabi, who recently in the new when he explained why he doesn’t roll with women, also explained why he believes that McGrgor has a good ground and did better grappling with Khabib Nurmagomedov than Gaethje did:
Sloth Jiu-Jitsu: you can be slow and unathletic and still kick butt in Jiu-Jitsu.