Dan Hardy: Conor McGregor did not want to showcase tactics at open workout

Conor McGregor’s open workout last week proved to be as polarizing as his upcoming boxing bout with Floyd Mayweather.

The showcase at the UFC’s Performance Institute garnered a lot of criticism, but former UFC welterweight contender Dan Hardy believes that the Irishman purposely steered clear of displaying anything significant ahead of his meeting with Mayweather.

“I think people have to step into Conor’s shoes,” Hardy told Ariel Helwani on Monday’s episode of The MMA Hour.

“If you were a couple of weeks out from the biggest fight of your career and you’re fighting a masterful boxer, you’ve got to think that you’re working out on the bag with him standing next to you.

“What are you going to do? You’re not going to want to look like a beast in the gym. You’re not going to have a crazy workout. You’re not going to show all of your tactics and all of your best moves — you’re not even going to have your hands up.”

Hardy underlined that McGregor’s “flamboyant” session was exactly what you’d expect from an open workout.

“The stuff he was doing was flamboyant, it was bravado and it was show. It’s exactly what you’d expect from an open workout,” he said.

“You’ve got to think that Floyd Mayweather is in the same room because for damn sure, he’s going to watch it.

“Why would you show anything? I certainly wouldn’t. Do capoeira, do whatever you want to do, as long as you don’t show what you’re going to do.”

“I thought he was going to go and play touch-butt in the park with Ido (Portal).”

Hardy, a former UFC fighter who has been named as a commentator for the UK and Irish broadcast of the fight with Sky Sports, claimed that Mayweather had a similarly well thought out workout.

“He was cruising. He was in third gear, so was Conor. He’s doing things he was comfortable with,” Hardy said.

“This will show you how obsessive I get over these things — there was one thing that stood out to me in the workouts.

“Right towards the end, (Floyd) was shadowboxing with weights and there was a guy that kept switching weights with him. Then they passed him a medicine ball and he was doing this thing where he danced around the ring with the medicine ball, waving it up and down.

“There was one time when he threw it to his mate and his mate threw it back at him, and it was a horrible return. He actually said, ‘Throw it to my chest,’ and then he tried again and failed again.

“That looked like the only thing that wasn’t preplanned in that workout.”