Conor mcgregor branded ‘narcissistic’ by old team-mate giving khabib

McGregor will make his long-awaited return to mixed martial arts action on Saturday week in the main event of UFC 229. The former two-division champion will be welcomed back to the Octagon

by his successor at the summit of the lightweight division, Khabib Nurmagomedov. McGregor’s showdown with Nurmagomedov has been nearly two years in the making and promises to be one of the

biggest fights in UFC history. Nurmagomedov’s preparations for maiden title defence have been aided by one of the McGregor’s former SBG Ireland team-mates, Myles Price. And Price’s

encounters with ‘The Notorious’ in the gym have left somewhat of a sour taste in his mouth. “I’ll be honest with you, I never really got on well with Conor within the gym because me and

Conor sparred a lot,” Price said of McGregor in an interview with _MMA Fighting’s Peter Carroll_. “At the time, Conor was taking fights at lightweight. “I understand the hierarchy within

gyms. Even here at AKA you have heated spars, but afterwards, we shake each other’s hands, we talk about what we can work on and develop as training partners or as a team. “Basically, with

Conor, he’s quite narcissistic. He’ll see you as competition. He’s not very nice to be around in the gym. “If you’re giving him hard spars, he won’t see you as a friend after a while.” Price

was welcomed warmly to American Kickboxing Academy in San Jose by Nurmagomedov and his manager Ali Abdelaziz, who was the subject of a brutal verbal onslaught from McGregor at the first UFC

229 pre-fight press conference last Thursday. “One of the first guys that came over to me was Khabib. He came up and said, ‘What’s up’, he knew who I was and he knew what the craic was,”

Price said. “Another one of the first people I talked to was Ali, his manager. He was such a welcoming guy, a lovely fella and really down to earth. “He said, ‘We’re all martial artists,

we’re all a family. I manage Joe Duffy, a fellow Irishman. I know what the story is, we just have a dislike for Conor McGregor’. “I said, ‘That’s probably something we have in common to a

degree’. “It was surprising how welcoming they were when I got talking to them. I’ve become a part of the family at AKA.” McGregor's bout with Nurmagomedov will be his first mixed

martial arts bout since his historic UFC 205 victory over Eddie Alvarez, a triumph which saw him become the first fighter in the promotion's history to hold two titles simultaneously.

UFC 229 FIGHT CARD Khabib Nurmagomedov vs Conor McGregor (lightweight title fight) Tony Ferguson vs Anthony Pettis (lightweight bout) Ovince Saint Preux vs Dominick Reyes (light-heavyweight

bout) Derrick Lewis vs Alexander Volkov (heavyweight bout) Michelle Waterson vs Felice Herring (women’s strawweight bout) Prelims Sean O’Malley vs Jose Alberto Quinonez (men’s bantamweight

bout) Sergio Pettis vs Jussier Formica (men’s flyweight bout) Scott Holtzman vs Alan Patrick (lightweight bout) Fight Pass Prelims Ryan LaFlare vs Tony Martin (welterweight bout) Lina

Lansberg vs Yana Kunitskaya (women’s bantamweight bout) Gray Maynard vs Nik Lentz (lightweight bout) Aspen Ladd vs Tonya Evinger (women's bantamweight bout)