SBG Dublin head coach John Kavanagh revealed that Conor McGregor wanted an MMA fight against Paulie Malignaggi.

Leaked sparring videos that were followed by media tirades led to the angle of a possible fight between Conor McGregor and Paulie Malignaggi. Oddmakers even released the betting lines for the would-be match-up, rightfully showing Malignaggi as the favorite if they faced each other in a boxing match.

But if a fight between the two outspoken fighters were to materialize, McGregor is apparently looking for it to take place inside a cage, with rules not limited to just punches.

“Conor wanted that,” said his coach John Kavanagh at the Original Penguin AW17 collection on Wednesday in Dublin (via MMA Fighting). “He said to me, ‘Let’s get him in the Octagon’, and I said that there was no way that he would fight in MMA. You’ve got to be able to prove yourself in the arena.”

“When Conor wanted a boxing license they could look at the Diaz 2 fight where there was more or less 25 minutes of boxing. Why would Paulie go to MMA? He’d never go to MMA,” he continued. “Now, Conor could tweet now and say ‘I’m fighting Paulie Malignaggi’, and I guess I would be wrong then.”

Kavanagh says he had no issue with Malignaggi, but the rift started when the former boxing champion began talking to the media about what had happened during camp, which involved some of their strategies against Floyd Mayweather Jr.

“This guy is a former world champion, he should know that you should keep your mouth shut until the fight is over – then write a book, then do fifty interviews,” Kavanagh said. “That would have been no problem, we would have no issue with that. But you can’t go the next day and the day after that and the day after that, and start giving away ideas we have.”

“That’s what threw me off, he wasn’t acting like a professional.”