By Jeff Aranow: Oscar De La Hoya doesn’t quite understand why it took Floyd Mayweather Jr. 10 rounds to knockout UFC fighter Conor McGregor last Saturday night in his pro debut at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, Nevada.
De La Hoya hints that Mayweather carried the 29-year-old UFC star McGregor for the fight to last as long as it did. De La Hoya notes that Mayweather isn’t a big puncher. He feels that Golden Boy star Saul Canelo Alvarez would have knocked McGregor out in the 1st round had he been in with him last Saturday night. It wouldn’t have been fair for Canelo to fight McGregor. There wouldn’t be an advantage for him in size like there was against Mayweather.
“Only Mayweather knows why it lasted 10 rounds,” said De La Hoya via Boxnation. “Obviously Mayweather isn’t the biggest puncher in the game. If it was a Canelo in there obviously it would last one round.”
De La Hoya is right. Canelo would have likely knocked McGregor out in the 1st round. McGregor had very little defensive skills once Mayweather started throwing shots at him. It looked to some that Mayweather didn’t seriously try to knock McGregor out until the 10th. Before that, Mayweather was fighting at a leisurely pace, as if he wanted to carry McGregor to a certain round before he finally knocked him out.
You would hate to think that Mayweather intentionally carried McGregor just for the sake of making it interesting for the boxing and MMA fans. It sure looked that way to me. I’ve seen Mayweather fight many times, and he never fought like that before. He wasn’t even throwing punches in the first 3 rounds. Mayweather was clearly carrying McGregor to get him past a certain point in the fight before electing to KO him. McGregor was so tired by the 10th round that he was ready to be knocked out by almost anything Mayweather threw at him. Mayweather hit McGregor hit with 20 unanswered punches in the final 2 rounds, leaving referee Robert Byrd no choice but to stop the fight.
Mayweather usually boxes his opponents, so it wasn’t all that surprising for him not going for the knockout in the early rounds. Before last Saturday, Mayweather’s last knockout came in 2011 when he knocked out Victor Ortiz by a sucker punch in round 4. Mayweather said he was going to walk McGregor down and get the knockout, and that’s exactly what he did. The difference is, Mayweather was fighting so slowly, making it appear that he was carrying McGregor. A lot of boxing fans are convinced that Mayweather let McGregor stick around so that the fight appeared competitive and drama filled to the many paying fans.
Canelo will have a lot of attention on him when he fights Gennady Golovkin on September 16 in their fight on HBO PPV at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, Nevada. Canelo won’t be the bigger puncher of the two in the fight. Golovkin punches harder than Canelo. It doesn’t matter if Canelo can knockout McGregor. He’s got a bigger problem on his hands with Triple G. He’s someone that has a real chance of knocking out Canelo.
De La Hoya should worry about that rather than on what Canelo can do against event fighter McGregor. The UFC fighter is done with boxing, and he’ll be soon returning to the UFC to resume his career. Mayweather didn’t rob McGregor of his dignity by knocking him out. McGregor can think the referee Robert Byrd in saving hi from being humiliated and possibly hurt. Byrd stopped the fight in the 10th round when McGregor starts to take punishment.
Golovkin will be defending his IBF, IBO and WBA middleweight titles against Canelo. Golovkin’s WBC title won’t be fought for. It’ll be on the line, but if Golovkin loses to Canelo, the WBC title will fall vacant. Canelo doesn’t want the belt. There are some who feel that Canelo will quickly vacate his IBF title in order to avoid having to take the dangerous IBF mandatory challenge Sergiy Derevyanchenko, who would be a real tough opponent for Canelo due to his size, power, boxing skills and chin.
“I think the fight fans are going to have a real taste of what boxing is all about on September 16th!” said De La Hoya.
De La Hoya is counting on Canelo and Golovkin putting on a much better show on September 16th compared to last Saturday’s Mayweather vs. McGregor fight. The good news is the bar set very low for Canelo and Golovkin to surpass the excitement of the Mayweather-McGregor fight, considering that was a mostly lackluster fight due to slow pace Mayweather was fighting at. McGregor was the one making the fight through most of the bout. Mayweather started to plod forward beginning in round 4, but he was still fighting very slowly and not looking like he was in the mood to put out much effort.
Mayweather vs. McGregor is expected to bring in huge PPV numbers from their Showtime fight. Some boxing fans think it’ll breathe PPV record set by Mayweather and Manny Pacquiao in 2015. It might. Canelo vs. Golovkin is not expected to bring in the same huge numbers on PPV despite it being a better fight. It might bring in over 2 million buys, which would be great for that fight. De La Hoya would obviously be more than pleased having over 2 million buys.
That would bring Canelo around the same amount of buys his fight with Mayweather bought in back in 2013. One thing that could limit the amount of PPV buys Canelo and GGG bring is the high number of boxing fans that ordered the Mayweather vs. McGregor fight. A percentage of those fans won’t want to order a second PPV fight just 3 weeks later between Canelo and Golovkin, because it’s just too expensive to have $170 worth of charges in just one month for PPV. That’s a lot of money for many boxing fans, and they’re not going to want to dump more money on PPV. For that reason the PPV numbers for Canelo vs. GGG could suffer.