Conor McGregor says his former sparring partner Paulie Malignaggi bailed from his recent training camp because he was badly concussed during their second sparring session for the Floyd Mayweather Jr. fight.
McGregor says Malignaggi was too hurt for him to return for a 3rd sparring session, so he used the excuse of the leaked photos to run from the camp rather than sticking it out. According to McGregor, he was thrashing Malignaggi, battering him against the ropes and putting him on the canvas with a punch.
McGregor views Malignaggi’s decision to quit his camp and then blame him as a sign of his own weakness and character. He feels that Malignaggi was looking any excuse he could just to get out of the camp, because things weren’t going well for him during the sparring sessions. McGregor says he slapping Malignaggi around the ring. Even the other sparring partners were worried about Malignaggi due to the head trauma he was taking during the sessions, says McGregor.
UFC president Dana White released a short segment of the McGregor-Malignaggi and it showed McGregor beating the stuffing out of Malignaggi, who looked helpless to keep the bigger and stronger UFC fighter off of him. At one point, Malignaggi fell down hard on the canvas after taking 3 shots to the head. Malignaggi looked hurt.
“It shows his weakness,” said McGregor about Malignaggi leaving his camp and talking trash about his experiences. “It shows his character in my opinion. He was looking for an exit. The spars were not good for him. I think he took a lot of head trauma. Straight after it, we were worried. The sparring partners were actually telling us when he was dropped back off to his home; he was stumbling out of the car after the 12 rounder,” said McGregor.
It sounds like the sparring sessions were an absolute nightmare for the 36-year-old Malignaggi. He might not have thought it out too well before accepting the invitation to work with McGregor. If Malignaggi had been thinking clearly, he might have begged off, saying that he wasn’t in good enough shape for sparring work. You’ve got to be in good shape to work as a sparring partner, and I don’t think Malignaggi was during his brief stint in McGregor’s camp. In hindsight, Malignaggi might not have realized how hard the sparring sessions would be.
Normally, Malignaggi is the guy that has sparring partners work for him rather than him working for someone else in the role. The sparring partners that have worked with Malignaggi likely weren’t looking to destroy him the way that McGregor was clearly doing. Sparring partners obviously know that if they go all out to take out the A-side fighter that has hired them, they’re not going to keep their job for very long. They’re going to be sent home early. Its’ likely been a long time since Malignaggi has had sparring as hard as the McGregor sparring. It sounds like Malignaggi wasn’t prepared for that kind of sparring work.
”He was knocked down; he was flattened against the ropes,” said McGregor. ”Multiple times the ropes kept him on his feet. We were worried about him. We were worried what was going to happen to him. He was certainly badly concussed, and then he got out and went running,” said McGregor.
It looked painful to watch how badly Malignaggi was beaten up by McGregor. That wasn’t sparring. That was a massacre of the first order. Malignaggi was in full retreat and taking shots from every side. McGregor was beating Malignaggi up like it was a playground fight between a bully and over-matched smaller kid. Malignaggi needed someone to step in and save him from McGregor, because it was a one-sided mismatch.
If Malignaggi really did leave camp due to save himself from taking another beating, then you can’t blame him. Malignaggi is more of a white collar professional at this point in his life. He’s not the guy that he was 9 to 10 years ago when he was beating guys like Lovemore N’Dou, Edner Cherry, Herman Ngoudjo and giving a prime version Miguel Cotto all kinds of problems. McGregor would have huge problems against the Malignaggi from back then, but definitely he sparred him at the right time when he was old and not the fighter he’d once been a decade ago.
“He came in; he spoke a hell of a game previous, very disparaging to my skillset,” said Malignaggi in continuing to talking about Malignaggi. “But the man shows up and tries to answer to that. You’ve got to give him respect and that’s what happened. ”He showed up. He tried his best, but it didn’t go his way. He got his [expletive] whooped. He got his pride dented, and then he wanted a way out. What a better way for a guy like him to exit under a load of clouds and mystery. You know what I mean? Under a cloud of questions,” said McGregor.
It’s unclear whether Malignaggi ever intended to stick it out as a sparring partner for the full camp with McGregor. It was thought by many in the boxing world that McGregor was hiring Malignaggi mainly as someone that would work on fundamentals and get helpful advice to learn how to beat Mayweather. I don’t think Malignaggi was used in the right way by McGregor. If he just wanted to wail on him and then brag about it, then he wasted a great opportunity that he had to learn from him. Malignaggi could have taught him a lot and given him great advice.
McGregor seemed to use the sparring time as a vendetta to get back at Malignaggi for the negative things he’d said about his boxing ability, and he would easily beat him if they were fought. If this was about McGregor just exacting revenge against Malignaggi, then it’s kind of petty. There are ton of other professional boxers that also have had disparaging things to say about McGregor, and you’re not seeing them being asked to help with sparring. Middleweight champion Gennady Golovkin thinks the Mayweather vs. McGregor fight is a joke. He appears to think McGregor has no chance. McGregor should have asked Golovkin to help him. That would have been interesting to see how well McGregor would do sparring Golovkin. IBF welterweight champion Errol Spence Jr. also doesn’t think too highly of McGregor. He’s not been offered a job either, as far as I can tell. Spence would be a real handful for McGregor. I’m not sure that McGregor would be able to the same things against the in his prime 27-year-old Spence that he was able to do against Malignaggi. McGregor needs guys that can help him in teaching him the sport of boxing. Beating up on an old and weak puncher like Malignaggi was hardly fair. McGregor was so much heavier than Malignaggi. McGregor looked to be at least 20 lbs. heavier than Malignaggi during the sparring session. That’s pretty significant. If McGregor brought in a light heavyweight Artur Beterbiev as a sparring partner, he’d be outweighed by 20 lbs. by the Russian fighter. The shoe would be on the foot. Would McGregor do well against the 2-time Russian Olympian Beterbiev in sparring or would it be a total wipeout? Beterbiev is at least 20 lbs. heavier than him. It would be just like him sparring with Malignaggi.
“We have multiple houses over here,” said McGregor in talking about the places where his sparring partners stay. “He can say what he wants. The guy is a mouthpiece. I don’t know what else to say. The guy came out here and got his [expletive] whipped. He got his ego badly dented, and that’s it. We sent the footage of the knockdown, and I don’t think they’re refusing to show it. He was flattened. What can I say? He got his [expletive] whopped,” said McGregor about Malignaggi.
McGregor is getting as much mileage as Malignaggi is in continuing to talk to the boxing media about the circumstances surrounding Malignaggi leaving his camp. It’s strange the way that the talk about the Mcgregor-Malignaggi sparring has drowned out talk about the McGregor vs. Mayweather fight at times. The reason for that is obvious. Malignaggi is doing a lot of talking to the media. In contrast, Mayweather is saying very little. He’s just working out very hard trying to shake off 2 years of ring rust.
McGregor says he sees worry and fatigue in Mayweather. He doesn’t think Mayweather has the conditioning he needs for this fight, which is understandable. You don’t say out of the ring for 2 years and then come back to have the conditioning you had before you’re long layoff. I don’t think Mayweather is going to be able to get back to the level he was at before he started his layoff in 2015. That Mayweather no longer exits.
Mayweather can only hope that McGregor doesn’t push a fast pace for too long of a time that wears him down. It is interesting how Mayweather has suddenly gotten quiet after the clip of video the McGregor-Malignaggi sparring sessions was released by UFC boss Dana White. Mayweather probably didn’t realize how dangerous McGregor would be for him until then. Mayweather has to take McGregor seriously after seeing that video, because he was throwing continuous shots and not worrying about whether they were hard or not. Mayweather cannot let McGregor hit him as much as Malignaggi was, because he might not survive a 12 round fight, especially if 8oz gloves are used. If Mayweather doesn’t have his conditioning to move for the entire fight, he’s going to be trapped against the ropes, getting pummeled in the same way that Malignaggi was during the sparring sessions. That’s bad news for Mayweather and for his legion of boxing fans.
“He’s alright. He’s kind of a loveable mouthpiece,” said McGregor about Malignaggi. “He’s alright. You know what I mean? But it did not go well for him. So, when I was hearing all that stuff he was saying, it’s concussion talk. The man was badly, badly concussed. Look at his face. He was bust up bad. As far as the images that got leaked, let me clear them. I didn’t leak no images. The only image I released was the one where my hands were behind my back, and that was in response to what he said, ‘I’ll beat him with one hand tied behind my back.’ No connecting to the face shots [were released]. No him getting slapped around the ring; nothing like that,” said McGregor.
Yeah, it clearly didn’t go well for Malignaggi during the sparring sessions with McGregor if the clip that was released by Dana White is indicative of how the rest of the sparring sessions went. Poor Malignaggi was getting his backside whipped by Malignaggi, and there was no trainer ringing a bell to stop the thrashing. With McGregor being the A-side, Malignaggi was out there all by his lonesome and there was no one to protect him from being worked over. The circumstances would have been different if Malignaggi had a trainer there and if he had hired McGregor for the sparring. They likely would have stopped the sparring and told him to slow it down so that they could work on things. McGregor was treating the sparring like a war, which is understandable given that’s how he plans on fighting Mayweather.
McGregor is going to make it as messy as possible for as long as possible to see if he can wear down the 40-year-old Mayweather. If Mayweather can’t hang, he’s going to get tired, beaten up, and he might need his trainer/father Floyd Mayweather Sr. to throw in the towel to save him. Either Mayweather Sr. or Leonard Ellerbe might need to step in to have the fight stopped. We are talking about an old millionaire fighter, who hasn’t been in a hard fight since his first fight with Marcos Maidana in 2014. All the matches that Mayweather had had since then have been easier fights where he didn’t have to take punishment. Mayweather ran from Maidana for 12 rounds in the rematch in 2014. In Mayweather’s fight with the injured Manny Pacquiao in May 2015, he was fighting a one-armed fighter due to Pacquiao’s shoulder problem. In Mayweather’s last fight in September 2015 against Andre Berto, he was fighting a past his best guy, who looked like he was just happy to be there for the payday. Berto didn’t fight like he was trying to win. He fought like someone that was just pleased to have been given the chance for the payday. It didn’t look like a real fight. If Mayweather had selected someone like Errol Spence Jr. or Keith Thurman, he would have been under duress from start to finish. We would have learned a lot about Mayweather from that fight.
“After the first one, he went on a tour and came back and got his [expletive] whooped and got dropped,” said McGregor. ”One of the pictures got leaked. I don’t know how it got leaked. When I found out, I pulled it back. Obviously, the internet is the internet and it blew up, and it hurt his ego about it and with so much pride, he went running. But it worked out perfectly for him, because he didn’t want to show up and go again. He couldn’t. It wasn’t in him. So that’s it. It worked out great for him. He got an exit under a lot of questions, and that’s exactly what a man like him wants,” said McGregor.
McGregor says when he found out about the photos being leaked, he tried to pull it back. How would he be able to do that if he didn’t know who released the photo? That’s hard to understand what he means by saying that. He can’t pull back leaked photos if he didn’t know who leaked them I the first place. As far as the timing of Malignaggi departing McGregor’s training camp, it definitely worked in Malignaggi’s favor. He’s received a TON of publicity in the boxing and the MMA world over this, and that has to be good for his career as a boxing commentator. If Malignaggi had stuck around McGregor’s camp the entire time until he was dismissed due to him taking a beating, it wouldn’t have ended nearly as well. It’s always worse when you get let go rather than when you quit. Malignaggi was wise to be the one that ended the sparring rather than McGregor.
”Let him speak to Floyd. I’m sure he has,” said McGregor about Malignaggi. You can’t prepare for me. You can’t prepare for the movement. You can’t prepare for any of it. Let him sit here and watch this. I’m sure he has watched it. Let him study. You cannot prepare for this. Nobody in the game moves like me, and that strikes like me, and has confidence like me. Let him speak. Let him talk. It’s all good. I’m going to knock him out bad. He’s too small. I know he’s fast. I know he’s got great reflexes. I know he’s experienced. I don’t care. I hit you, you fall, and that’s it. He will be unconscious if we go 8oz, which we are very close to, I believe. There’s a Commission hearings and all, so I’m very pleased about that. He’ll be unconscious inside 2 rounds. Really, 1 round, only for the 10 second count, I will give him maybe surviving to the 2nd, but if it’s under 10oz [gloves], then maybe 4 rounds. Under 4 rounds, he will certainly be unconscious and that’s it,” said McGregor.
We’ll soon see if McGregor can do things he says he’ll go against Mayweather. If Mayweather got old, then it’s definitely possible that he’ll knock him out like he says. The 8oz gloves will make this a very dangerous fight for Mayweather, because McGregor has the much better power and he throws combinations. Mayweather isn’t likely to knockout McGregor throwing single pot shots. He’ll need to put his punches together to have a chance of knocking him out, and that’s not how Mayweather fights.