Arum says Mayweather vs. McGregor shouldn’t be allowed

By Boxing News - 05/18/2016 - Comments

arum97By Jeff Aranow: Floyd Mayweather Jr. is targeting MMA star Conor McGregor as his next opponent in resuming his boxing career. Mayweather says he’s still undecided about whether he’ll return to the ring or not, but if he does decide to fight on, he’d like to face the 27-year-old McGregor for his next fight.

Mayweather thinks a fight against McGregor will bring in the same amount of PPV buys as his fight against Manny Pacquiao. Top Rank promoter Bob Arum thinks it’s a really bad idea for Mayweather and McGregor to fight each other because he feels it would be a joke if the fight takes place in a boxing ring.

Arum says the fighters are from different sports, and he thinks it shouldn’t be allowed to happen. Arum didn’t come right out and say it but it seems that he feels that McGregor would have little chance in a boxing ring against Mayweather. Arum would be right, of course. McGregor has too much to learn in terms of the sport and not enough time.

If we’re about only months before he faces Mayweather in a fight contested by boxing rules, there’s little chance that McGregor will learn enough in that time to be competitive with Mayweather. This week a sparring video was released by TMZ.com of McGregor sparring former IBO welterweight champion Chris Van Heerden. It looked like McGregor was getting the worst of it. It wasn’t an entire video of the sparring session, just pieces of it where McGregor was doing some good things. However, Van Heerden constantly backed McGregor up with pressure and was able to nail him with clever looking shots. If Van Heerden was able to do this to McGregor, then a fighter like Mayweather would be a nightmare.

YouTube video

“That’s ridiculous. You know, McGregor is a MMA guy and that’s a different sport than boxing. And if McGregor fought [Mayweather] as a boxer it’s a joke, shouldn’t be allowed,” said Arum to Fighthub.com.

When a similarly strange fight between former professional wrestler Antonio Inoki and former heavyweight world champion Muhammad Ali was brought up as a comparison to the Mayweather-McGregor fight, Arum said, “That wasn’t real, believe me, I promoted it…I don’t want to talk about it.”

The only way that Mayweather won’t be allowed to fight McGregor is if UFC president Dana Hall stops the fight from taking place. McGregor is signed with the UFC, and it can’t be a good thing for them to have McGregor fighting in different sport and taking a potentially embarrassing loss to Mayweather, which could hurt his value to the UFC organization. There’s also the potential of injury that McGregor could suffer in the ring against Mayweather. It would be a risky fight for McGregor and for the organization he’s under contract with for him to take a fight against Mayweather.

It is very strange that Mayweather is kicking around the idea of fighting an MMA fighter like McGregor rather than coming back to fight boxers. Mayweather still has a strong legacy already in the sport of boxing, but he’s not finishing his career on a strong note with his recent fight against Andre Berto and now the idea of him fight McGregor rather than a fighter.

You’d hate to see Mayweather tarnish his hard-earned reputation by turning the tail end of his career into some kind of circus-like thing where he selects fighter from other sports that haven’t had the long years of training that is needed for them to succeed against a professional boxer. Let’s say Mayweather faces McGregor and beats him with ease. Does Mayweather then turn around and fight someone from the NFL that has never fought in the ring before or some other sport. Further, where does a victory over a non-boxer like McGregor go in the record books?

Is it considered a professional fight for Mayweather so that he can get win No.50, or is it considered an exhibition bout? I couldn’t imagine someone like Babe Ruth being given credit for hitting a home run against a Triple A minor league team. If Ruth was able to pad his homerun stats against farm league teams, it would mean his stats were inflated. I think it should be the same for Mayweather. If he wants to fight non-boxers in the ring, it should be an exhibition fight that doesn’t count as a real win. If it does count, then this would be McGregor’s pro debut. Since when do fighters with the records that Mayweather has fight novice 0-0 fighters making their pro debut? I think it would be bad for the sport if we started seeing guys like Canelo Alvarez and Gennady Golovkin fighting guys with a 0-0 record fighting for the first time. But it would be even worse if they fought the novice fighters and asked the boxing world to pay to see them on PPV, as Mayweather could be doing in facing McGregor.