WBC lightweight champion Mikey Garcia says he’s open to either sparring or fighting Conor McGregor before he fights Floyd Mayweather Jr. this year. Mikey says they can arrange a weight to fight each other at if he wants to test himself before he faces Mayweather. Mikey is willing to fight the 28-year-old McGregor at a catch-weight at either welterweight or junior middleweight.
If McGregor isn’t interested in fighting him, Mikey says he would be open to giving McGregor some work in his gym to help get ready for Mayweather.
Mikey says McGregor is the equivalent of a beginning boxer. Mikey doesn’t even rate McGregor at the level of a good amateur at this point because a good amateur fighter would have superior boxing skills than McGregor.
Mikey doesn’t think McGregor is a totally unskilled fighter. He believes that McGregor is skilled in terms of boxing for a sport like MMA, but not in as far as being a boxer. He’s too raw at this point to compete against world class fighters in boxing.
“If he wants to try boxing, sure I’ll do that,” said Mikey to Fighthub about a fight with McGregor. “It most likely would [ruin the Mayweather-McGregor fight if he beat McGregor]. It probably wouldn’t be big anymore. If he’s serious about boxing and fighting a at a championship level, then I’d definitely be interested in doing that. I think if he comes down and is fighting at 145 or 155, something around there, we can find a weight that is compatible for him. He does know boxing for his MMA, but it’s not at the level of what champion boxers have. He sometimes throws punches at different levels. He might try and throw a superman punch at me in the ring,” said Mikey.
McGregor has made it clear that the only boxer that he’s interest in fighting is Mayweather. McGregor clearly isn’t interested in taking any chances by fighting someone good and ruining his payday fight against Mayweather. This is a business fight between Mayweather and McGregor. No one is going to get in between the two of them. Mayweather has already said that he’s not interested in facing anyone in the boxing word despite there being countless top fighters that would be interested in fighting Mayweather.
As far as Mayweather’s legacy goes, he would gain a lot more of he came back to boxing and beat someone like Gennady Golovkin or Keith Thurman than fighting a beginning boxer like McGregor. Mayweather’s fight against McGregor isn’t going to do much for his legacy. It’ll be more like Muhammad Ali’s 1976 fight against wrestler Antonio Inoki in Tokyo, Japan. That was a fight that was ruled a 15 round draw. Inoki, who had never boxed before, was on his back the entire fight, kicking at Ali’s legs. Ali only threw 6 punches in the entire fight due to Inoki being on his back. After the fight ended, the crowd surprising threw garbage into the ring to show their displeasure at the lack of action.
Mayweather vs. McGregor is likely going to have a similar outcome with a lot of angry boxing fans at the lack or because of the fight not being competitive. The boxing fans and MMA fans that purchase the Mayweather-McGregor fight will learn the hard way that if they want to see exciting fights, they need to stick with watching guys from their own sports rather than seeing hybrid fights like Mayweather vs. McGregor. Mayweather would have the same problems if he tried to fight at MMA. McGregor would wrestle Mayweather to the ground and pound or put him in a submission hold to get him to tap out. It wouldn’t even be fair.
He’s not at world class level,” said Mikey. ”He might be at the beginning boxing or prospect level, but not even a good amateur, because a good amateur has better skills than he does for boxing. His boxing is good for MMA, but not for world championship boxing. Conor, hit me up if he wants me to test him out. If he does fight Floyd before anybody else, come to the gym and I’ll give him that work,” said Mikey.
I doubt that McGregor is going to take Mikey up on the offer to help him out with sparring. The reason why is obvious. If McGregor spars with a well-known fighter like Mikey, there’s too much risk involved in Mikey or someone from his Oxford, California gym leaking the details of the sparring session to the boxing world. If news gets out that Mikey is beating up Conor and totally schooling him in their sparring sessions, then it could lead to boxing fans staying away from purchasing the Mayweather-McGregor fight.
They obviously need fans to want to buy the fight, as it’s a tough sell as it is. McGregor is going to be taking on a world class fighter without him the background to compete on an even playing field. The fans that actually think that McGregor has a chance in this fight are naïve to say the least. Without a huge handicap, McCgregor is going to get destroyed by Mayweather. The type of handicap that McGregor needs is for Mayweather not to be able to use his right hand. If they could tie Mayweather’s right hand behind his back and just have him use his left, then that would be the starting point to make the fight competitive. That’s how much of a joke this fight is. You’d have to tie Mayweather’s hands behind his back and have a 200 pound weight that he drags around the ring behind him to make it fair.
Mikey and Adrien Broner are being talked about being in negotiations for a fight in July. That’s a big fight that would interest a lot of fans. Mikey would need to move up to welterweight for Broner. It would be a good chance to see if Mikey can take getting hit by a fairly strong welterweight with a good chin. Mikey has been able to knockout fighters in the featherweight, super featherweight ad lightweight divisions, but he might not be able to do that against a welterweight like Broner.