I`ve pasted a page here that links to a film study showing how Khabib displayed a higher fight IQ than Conor when they met, was Khabib`s stand up game vastly underrated, and did his boxing skills rate out of 10 v Conor? https://www.google.com/search?q=KHA...i57j69i61l2.1817j0j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8 elusive2.0
Khabibs striking was worse than Connors but in conjunction with the fear of the takedown and clinch It made Connor make mistakes and get dropped with that overhand in the second. Khabibs only round he lost came in the 3rd because he chooses to try to make a point about his striking and was outboxed for the round but Connor was already too fatigued from the beating he took in the first and second to land anything significant. So when Khabib took the fight to the ground again he easily got the sub in the 4th Connor also fatigued himself even more in the 3rd. In terms of whose the overall smarter martial artist I think you have to give it to Khabib their both smart but Khabibs ability to mix everything together so seamlessly and weaponize pace made him seem unbeatable.
It also didn't help that Conor came into that fight looking like he came off a drug bender. His body was soft, his reactions were slow and definitely didn't look focused. I don't think it would have mattered, but if he had showed up in the form he did against Alvarez, he would have at least had a legitimate punchers chance. It's amazing that he took the most important fight of his fight so lightly or maybe he just didn't care after he got that Floyd money. It's weird because I know the fight was very short so it didn't tell us very much, but his body and his reactions looked so much better in the Cowboy fight.
He probably looked a lot better against cowboy because he was fighting a 40 year old guy who had lost 9 out of his last 12 fights.
