Atlas says Mayweather-McGregor will harm Canelo-Golovkin promotion

By Boxing News - 06/23/2017 - Comments

Image: Atlas says Mayweather-McGregor will harm Canelo-Golovkin promotion

By Allan Fox: Teddy Atlas of ESPN believes that the August 26th Floyd Mayweather Jr. vs. Conor McGregor fight is going to hurt the September 16th pay-per-view contest between Saul “Canelo” Alvarez and Gennady “GGG” Golovkin for a couple of reasons. First off, Atlas sees the boxing fans that purchase the Mayweather-McGregor fight on Showtime PPV as having spent their money by the time the Canelo-Golovkin fight comes around 3 weeks later on September 16.

Many of the fans won’t have extra money to purchase the Golovkin (37-0, 33 KOs) and Canelo (49-1-1, 34 KOs) fight, even though it shapes up to be the far better fight on paper. Mayweather (49-0, 26 KOs) is fighting a guy that has never competed in a professional or amateur boxing match in his life in McGregor (0-0). It’s almost unfair for Mayweather to fight McGregor without a handicap involved.

“Yeah, absolutely,” said Atlas to Mike and Mike in saying that the Mayweather-McGregor fight will hurt the Canelo vs. Golovkin fight promotion and PPV sales. “That’s like trying to open up a business right after Christmas. Everyone spent their money already, and you ask them to go shopping? From an economic standpoint, it’s already tough now that have that in. They put Christmas before your fight,” said Atlas in describing how the Mayweather vs. McGregor fight will harm the Canelo-Golovkin fight promotion and numbers due to it coming before that fight on August 26.

The high asking price for the Mayweather-McGregor fight is something that could really hurt the Canelo and Golovkin fight. The Mayweather-McGregor fight is expected to go for $100 on PPV. When you look at that price, it is way too high to get a lot of the fans to want to come up with another $70 just 3 weeks later to see Canelo battle Golovkin on Showtime PPV.

There’s nothing that Canelo and Golovkin can do about the Mayweather and McGregor fight stealing a lot of the thunder from their fight. It’s the boxing and MMA media that are driving that fight. Mayweather and McGregor are masters at the sound bite. They say a lot of interesting stuff, and make for excellent interviews.

Canelo can’t speak English, and he’s usually very selective in the things he says about his opponents. Canelo seems to be a doing a little better job of trash talking for this fight with GGG, but he’s still not doing enough to take the air out of the interview in the Mayweather-McGregor fight.

Golovkin speaks English, but he only has a few things to say normally. He repeats a lot of the same phrases in his interviews with the boxing media. However, Golovkin is clearly the guy doing the better job of trash talking and drumming interest in the Canelo fight. Canelo is too conservative, and he seems to be undermining himself by not saying enough about his important fight with GGG.

“This takes the hair out of the arena,” said Atlas in remarking how the Mayweather-McGregor fight will hurt ticket sales for the Canelo-GGG fight. ”This takes the hair out of the pay-per-view. If it’s a bad fight, then that’s the kind of scenario again that the promoters have to worry about,” said Atlas in talking about the negative after effects that could occur if the Mayweather-McGregor fight is a bad one with little action. It could hurt the PPV sales for the Canelo-Golovkin fight, as well as the other PPV fights that take place in the remainder of 2017.

It’s going to take a miracle for McGregor to fight well enough to make it competitive against Mayweather. I’m not talking about McGregor winning that fight, because that’s simply not going to happen. He’s too limited as a fighter, and he has way too much to learn about boxing for him to be competitive with Mayweather. McGregor would need 15 to 20 years to learn how to fight well enough to give Mayweather problems. Mayweather has been training at boxing since he was 5-years-old. McGregor is getting a crash course in boxing over the last year. That’s simply not going to be nearly enough for him to win.

Atlas believes that McGregor couldn’t even beat a 3rd tier boxer at this point, and he’s probably right. You look at some of these C-level fighters, and it’s pretty obvious that McGregor would be in a world of hurt against many of those guys.

“This will probably be about as easy as you can make money,” said Atlas to Mike and Mike about Mayweather’s fight against Conor McGregor on August 26. “It really is easy money for Floyd. It’s going to be a Super Bowl type of event, and it’s going to be a carnival type atmosphere. I do think Barnum and Bailey a little bit, the circus. Barnum and Bailey used to have a saying, ‘There’s a sucker born every minute.’ I don’t see it as being athletically competitive, said Atlas in talking about the Mayweather-McGregor fight.

Mayweather picked a guy that is super popular in the UFC in McGrgor. If this fight were to take place in the octagon, McGregor would do well if he didn’t get nailed by Mayweather while trying to grapple him. Even in that sport, Mayweather would have a very good chance of knocking McGregor out before he got his hands on him. It might take McGregor too long to get his mitts on Mayweather. By the time McGregor did close enough to put a submission hold on Mayweather, he’d likely be counting stars. We’re talking about a fighter with very crude striking skills in McGregor.

“The bad thing is it could be boring, which is possible because of the mentality of Floyd’s style,” said Atlas.”I don’t see him [McGregor] having a chance. He’s a caveman as far as his skills go. When you compare him to an elite fighter, when people say he’s got a puncher’s chance, you’ve got guys like Canelo and Pacquiao; Maidana was a pretty good puncher. They didn’t have a puncher’s chance. How’s he going to be? He’s not nearly what an elite fighter is. Maybe as a striker, he’s one of the better ones. As a boxer, in that universe, he’s not a C-class fighter,” said Atlas.

Atlas is really letting McGregor have it by saying he’s not even C-class, but he’s probably right. There are a lot of tough C-class fighters that have been boxing for years and years. You can’t take a fighter that just started boxing like McGregor and throw him into the ring with a C-class fighter without him getting torn apart. But that’s the whole reason the Mayweather-McGregor fight is going to be so unfair and so one-sided.

It’s surprising that the boxing and MMA public will be pouring money into this mismatch, because they’re setting themselves up to be arguably ripped off. As far as entertainment goes, the Canelo-Golovkin is the far better deal for your money. At least that fight involves two professional fighters that are evenly matched. McGregor really shouldn’t be allowed to fight Mayweather in my opinion.

You’re talking about a championship level fighter facing a novice. That’s pretty rare nowadays because it’s frowned upon. In the past you would see stuff like that, but it usually occurred when a championship level fighter had taken a loss and was coming back from that. With Mayweather, he hasn’t been beaten as of yet as a pro. There’s no reason for him to be fighting someone with no experience like McGregor other than for the money, which obviously what this fight is all about.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ecZqMVCF3fo