Paulie Malignaggi says he’s not interested in accepting the challenge to face UFC champion Conor McGregor in the octagon under MMA rules. He says if McGregor wants to fight him, it’s got to take place in a boxing ring.
Malignaggi says McGregor talked a lot of trash after their 2 sparring sessions by saying that he knocked him down and got the better of him. Malignaggi wants McGregor to “man up” and prove that he’s better than him in boxing by facing him inside the ring.
McGregor called Malignaggi out this past week, telling him to fight him in the octagon. Malignaggi has never fought or been trained in MMA before. If he were to face McGregor in the UFC, he would be way out of his element.
“You’re talking all this [expletive] about how you’ll handle it in the cage,” said Malignaggi to Es News Reporting about McGregor calling him out to fight in the octagon. “Now not only are you no releasing the video, now you not wanting to box either. Nah, it don’t work that way. Now you got to be a man and prove yourself. You got to show what kind of balls you’ve got. It was so easy to talk all that [expletive]. It was so easy. You got to box and you’ve got to prove it. We’re not going to go in the cage. That’s not where he handled it You handled me in the ring. That’s what you’re saying, so go prove it. That’s what you’ve got to do. He’s got to man up now. It was a weird year. All the more reason I should come back and smack McGregor,” said Malignaggi.
McGregor cannot afford a second loss in boxing. McGregor lost to Floyd Mayweather Jr. by a 10th round knockout on August 26. The fight was halted by the referee in the 10th round after McGregor grew too fatigued to protect himself and fight back. Despite losing the fight, McGregor didn’t take a lot of criticism from boxing and MMA fans due to him being competitive with Mayweather.
If McGregor faces Malignaggi in a fight under the rules of boxing and loses, it could hurt his popularity. The reason for that is pretty obvious. Malignaggi is not a big star in boxing. To be sure, Malignaggi is a former 2 division world champion, but he’s not considered to be talented like some of the existing world champions like Gennady Golovkin and Saul Canelo Alvarez. Getting beaten by Malignaggi would be inexcusable for McGregor. You couldn’t absorb a loss to McGregor the way that he could against Mayweather.
”Maybe one of these boxing guys…maybe Malignaggi would come over and do an MMA bout…or Floyd, maybe I could entice Floyd back. We could either do a rematch in boxing, or like he said originally, we’ll do an MMA fight next. They are the options that are on the table for me right now,” said McGregor to mmafighting.com.
