By Allan Fox: Floyd Mayweather Jr. says he doesn’t believe that his August 26 opponent Conor Mcgregor was knocked out by one of his sparring partners while training for their mega-fight on Showtime PPV. Former WBO welterweight champion Jessie Vargas and Brandon Rios both broke the news last Sunday in saying that McGregor was knocked in a sparring session.
“He got knocked out in sparring already. Yeah, man. The boxing world is small so, it’s a small circle,” said Jessie Vargas to Villianfy in talking about Mcgregor getting knocked out by an unnamed sparring partner.
This is really bad for the Mayweather-McGregor promotion. You might as well see this as a big fight being shown right before the Mayweather vs. McGregor fight, which is what those two are doing by staging their fight 3 weeks ahead of the September 16 bout between Gennady “GGG” Golovkin and Saul Canelo Alvarez. You have to hope for Mayweather’s sake that more rumors of McGregor getting knocked out don’t continue to get leaked to the press in the coming weeks.
Brandon Rios then backed up what Vargas was saying by pointing out that he’s hearing stories too.
This is potentially terrible news for the promotion of the Mayweather vs. McGregor, considering that the boxing and MMA fans might not be interested in paying their hard-earned money to order the expensive Mayweather-McGregor fight if they think it’s going to be a mismatch.
McGregor getting knocked out by a sparring partner at this early juncture in the training for the Mayweather fight is a bad omen. It’s bad for the promotion if this story by Vargas continues to have legs. The video of Vargas talking about McGregor being knocked out by a sparring partner has gone viral with over 894,000 viewers seeing the video. That’s an incredible number for just one video.
Mayweather sees this as fake news, and he doesn’t believe the stories about McGregor being knocked out in sparring.
“If I ain’t see no footage I don’t believe it. And me and Jessie Vargas are in communication,” said Mayweather to Fighthype.com. ”We’re talking about working together again as far as him signing back with Mayweather Promotions. I would love to work back with Jessie Vargas, but everything is rumors until I see it.”
It’s going to take a lot more than Mayweather to convince the fans that the rumors of McGregor being knocked out are fall. McGregor needs to address these rumors. Ideally, it would be good if McGregor held a press conference to tell the boxing and MMA fans that he’s not been knocked out in sparring.
Depending on how believable McGregor is, the fans would either buy what he’s saying in denying that he was knocked out in sparring or continue to believe that the rumors are true. Having seen sparring video of McGregor and Chris Van Heerden from last year, it’s believable to me that McGregor was knocked out in sparring.
McGregor’s boxing skills are nonexistent. He has a terrible habit of fighting with his hands down by his waist, with his head sticking out far in front of his lower body while leaning forward. Van Heerden could nail McGregor with straight hands again and again during the sparring session. He couldn’t miss. Van Heerden isn’t a big puncher by any means.
If McGregor is working with sparring partners that have power of any kind, then it wouldn’t be all that surprising to me to believe that he’s been knocked out already. I wouldn’t be surprised if McGregor has been hurt many times during his sparring sessions. McGregor can’t fight true boxers the way that he did during the sparring video with Van Heerden. That kind of fighting only works in MMA, where his opposition have little experience in boxing.
It doesn’t matter if Mayweather believes the McGregor knockout rumors or not. It’s the boxing and MMA public that likely DO believe it. Unfortunately for Mayweather, the more fans that believe the rumors, the likely viewer PPV buys his fight with McGregor is going to generate on August 26. You can understand it from the point of the fans. They’re being asked to pay as much as $99 to see Mayweather fight a novice in McGregor under the Marquess of Queenberry rules of boxing. McGregor has never fought a boxing match in his life, and now he’s going to be fighting the best fighter in the sport in a 12-round fight. This isn’t going to be a 4-round affair.
It’s going to be a full 12 rounds, and poor McGregor is taking it without any experience in boxing whatsoever aside from the training he’s getting with sparring partners. We don’t know who these sparring partners are. We do know that McGregor still hasn’t used Paulie Malignaggi, who he supposedly was going to be working with in preparation for the fight. The fans are being asked to pay a ton of money to watch Mayweather fight a guy that is rumored to have been knocked out in sparring.
The big question is what happens if more knockout rumors surface about McGregor? With training camp just staring for McGregor, you would have to believe that he could end up getting knocked out again if what Jessie Vargas says about McGregor having been knocked out is true. Will the boxing and MMA fans want to pay to see Mayweather fight McGregor if they keep hearing rumors of McGregor being knocked out in sparring? I would have to believe that the PPV sales for the Mayweather-McGregor fight would seriously be impacted by the knockout rumors.
”Mayweather-McGregor is a circus, and I don’t have a dog in the fight,” said Top Rank promoter Bob Arum in talking to K.O. Artist Sports.
Arum sees the Mayweather vs. McGregor fight as an event, and not a real fight. That’s the whole problem. The fight is viewed by a lot of boxing fans as non-fight. Some compare it to Muhammad Ali’s fight against wrestler Antonio Inoki. It’s potentially a bad match. The sparring rumors of McGregor being knocked out obviously heighten the concerns about the Mayweather-McGregor fight winding up as a mismatch. When fans hear stuff like this, they realize that they could wind up purchasing a match that turns out to be noncompetitive on August 26.
Above all, the fans want to see a competitive fight. Even if the ending is sudden and brutal, the boxing and MMA fans are counting on the Mayweather vs. McGregor fight being competitive. If it isn’t competitive due to McGregor falling apart immediately, the fans going to be bitter and upset about it. The KO rumors of McGregor getting knocked out in sparring is a definite red flag for this fight. I think for a lot of fans, they’re going to pay attention to the knockout rumors and steer clear of purchasing the Mayweather-McGregor fight.
