Chris van Heerden, a former sparring partner for UFC champion Conor McGregor, gives the 28-year-old fighter ZERO chance of beating Floyd Mayweather Jr. in their fight at 154 pounds on August 26. Van Heerden last sparred with McGregor a year ago, and he say he landing at will with his shots on the Irish fighter during the sparring session.
There’s video of the sparring partner on Youtube, and it looked like Van Heerden was just toying with McGregor, because it was too easy for him. McGregor looked like he was going all out trying to land knockout punches, while Van Heerden easily avoiding his shots and peppering him with shots. The skill level between the two fighters was extensive. Van Heerden looked leagues better.
”People telling me Mayweather will have his hands full trying to land on McGregor -STOP IT! I respect McGregor BUT I ain’t Floyd and I landed,” said Van Heerden on his social media site.
There’s a chance that McGregor has improved since his last sparring session with Van Heerden from a year ago. But even if McGregor has improved dramatically, he’s going to be in over his head against Mayweather.
McGregor won’t be able to elude Mayweather’s punches if he decides to move around the ring like some boxing and MMA fans are expecting him to. Mayweather has fast feet, and all he needs to do is jab for him to land. At the same time, it’s not easy to hit Mayweather because of his quick reflexes. Mayweather is very good at moving his head back just enough to avoid incoming shots. McGregor’s would do well to try and throw to the body, because Mayweather can be hit to the body a lot easier than to the head. Mayweather will counter McGregor if he tries to land his body shots. We could see McGregor land fewer and fewer shots as the fight goes on due to him having to pay each time he connects with a shot.
”It’s crazy. I real all these posts where people say Mayweather’s gonna have his hands full landing on Conor, because of Conor’s skill and footwork and movement,” said Van Heerden to TMZ.com. ”I’m no Mayweather and out of camp, out of shape, I landed on Conor McGregor at will. It’s crazy to think people can actually compare a fighter that’s 0-0 in a boxing ring compared to a legend that’s 49-0 and has beaten the best in the world,”said Van Heerden in discussing the Mayweather vs. McGregor fight.
Van Heerden doesn’t give McGregor much of a chance of knocking out Mayweather with one of his big power shots, as he notes that Mayweather has been hit hard before during his career, and he’s always been able to take the shots and recover from them. McGregor hits hard, but he likely doesn’t have the kind of power that Mayweather has seen in his fights against Saul Canelo Alvarez, Miguel Cotto and Marcos Maidana. Those were all huge punchers, and Mayweather won with ease against them. He took their big punches from time to time, and was able to use his boxing skills to beat them all by decisions.
”No, he’s been hit by guys that can punch, and he didn’t go down,” said Van heerden about Mayweather. ”He knows how to recover.”
If McGregor does beat Mayweather, it would send shockwaves through the boxing and MMA world, as he’s a huge underdog. It would help Mayweather’s bottom line if he were to lose to McGregor, because it would give him a second shot at another monstrous payday. If you look at it that way, it’s not a bad thing for Mayweather to lose to McGregor. That’s not to say that Mayweather would ever intentionally lose to McGregor. But if Mayweather were to lose, he would make more money, because it would give him the excuse to fight McGregor in a rematch. A second fight between the two under those conditions would be tremendous. I think it would be even bigger than the first fight.
If Mayweather wins the August 26 fight, then there’s no point in his facing McGregor again. Mayweather would have done what everyone expected him to do in beating the UFC star. Mayweather could then go back into retirement and enjoy the fortune that he’s amassed during his long boxing career.
McGregor has the power to beat Mayweather, but it’s going to require a perfect storm for McGregor to win this fight. Mayweather will have to have to have gotten old since his last fight in 2015, and McGregor will need to land the perfect shot for him to get the knockout. There’s no chance that McGregor will beat Mayweather by a 12 round decision, because he doesn’t have the boxing skills to do that. It’s got to be by a knockout.
The people that are giving McGregor a chance in the fight are his fans, and the MMA fans that aren’t familiar with Mayweather. You have to understand that for many of the MMA fans, this will be the first time they’ve ever seen Mayweather fight. Those MMA fans are accustomed to seeing McGregor totally dominate his opposition in the UFC during his career. McGregor has looked so good during his fights that it’s impossible to picture him losing to anybody short of him getting trapped in a submission hold and tapping out. With the fight being under boxing rules, a lot of MMA fans figure that McGregor can’t lose, because he’s so good at the standup fighting.
The pay-per-view price for the Mayweather-McGregor fight still hasn’t been officially announced. However, it’s expected to be $100 per household. That’s the same price that boxing fans were asked to pay for Mayweather’s fight against Manny Pacquiao in May 2015. The fight brought in 4.6 million PPV buys. It’s believed that the Mayweather vs. McGregor fight could eclipse that number of buys.
Putting the fight at $100 for PPV could be a deal breaker for a lot of boxing fans, as the Mayweather-McGregor fight isn’t seen as being a competitive enough match-up for many fans to want to pay $100 per household. The casual fans will need to be the driving force to produce the huge pay-per-view numbers that Mayweather wants. The casual fans likely won’t be aware that the Mayweather-McGregor fight is a mismatch, so they’ll buy the fight in big numbers and make it a success without the hardcore fans’ help.
This will be a boxing event, not an MMA fight. Showtime’s broadcast team for the event will be as follows: Brian Custer, Mauro Ranallo, Al Bernstein and Paul Maglignaggi. Additionally, Jim Gray will do the interviewing. The unofficial scoring for Showtime will be done by Steve Farhood. It’s a good team of broadcasters for the event. Mayweather Promotions is the main promoter for the card.
Mayweather and McGregor will be fighting on August 26 on Showtime pay-per-view at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, Nevada. It’s unclear whether the date will stay the same or not. It depends on Golden Boy Promotions, as they have a fight scheduled for September 16 between Saul Canelo Alvarez and Gennady “GGG” Golovkin. If they move off that date, then we’ll likely see Mayweather-McGregor slide into that spot, which is on a Mexican holiday.
“These guys are going to fight at 154 pounds. They’re going to wear 10-ounce gloves. It’ll be in a ring. It’s gonna be a 12-round fight. Both fighters will be tested by USADA for anti-doping,” said UFC president Dana White to Yahoo Sports News.
It’s great that the Mayweather vs. McGregor fight was able to be put together, as just last month there were a lot of naysayers who didn’t believe this fight would ever get put together due to the many obstacles that blocked the making of the match-up. Mayweather-McGregor could wind up as the ‘Fight of the Century’ with the PPV numbers eclipsing the Mayweather vs. Pacquiao PP numbers from 2015.
“This is all anybody wants to talk about anywhere I go,” said White. “If the fight goes well, everybody involved is gonna make some money.”
When Mayweather fought Manny Pacquiao in 2015, the fight was able to make a ton of money due to the combination of high ticket and pay-per-view prices, and low cost undercard. The money for the fight was only going to the main event. They didn’t throw a lot of money at the undercard to make it a thrilling one, as the felt that the boxing public would pay to see the fight card due to the main event between Mayweather and Pacquiao without the need of a quality undercard. It would have been better for the promoters to load up the undercard with quality fighters from their promotions, but that would have meant that they would have had to share money. It didn’t seem like they were interested in doing that.
Mayweather is going to get a lot of loot for the McGregor fight. The early estimates for Mayweather’s take home pay is $100 million. Mayweather made $250 million against Pacquiao. We could see Mayweather make similar money against McGregor depending on his purse split and the amount of PPV buys the fight takes in.