Mayweather: I’m going straight at McGregor

By Boxing News - 08/16/2017 - Comments

Image: Mayweather: I’m going straight at McGregor

By Allan Fox: Floyd Mayweather Jr. says his objective in the Conor McGregor fight is to look to right after him to knock him out, and give the fight fans a present for his lackluster fight against Manny Pacquiao two years ago.

Mayweather said last night on the Jimmy Kimmel show that there is no chance that McGregor will be able to go the distance with him. If this turns out to be the case, it would be the first knockout for Mayweather in 6 years since he stopped Victor Ortiz in 2011. That wasn’t much of a knockout. Mayweather hit Ortiz while his hands were down a split second after he had hugged him to tell him that he was sorry for head-butting him.

“He [McGregor] is going to land shots because in this fight I’m going straight ahead,” said Floyd. “Normally it’s more taking my time, being very cautious, but this time I’m going straight ahead because the fans deserve it. It’s going to be bigger than the Pacquiao fight,” Mayweather said. “I feel like I owe the fans seeing as me and Pacquiao didn’t give the fans a blockbuster. Me and McGregor should give the fans a blockbuster.”

Pacquiao doesn’t give McGregor any chance of beating Mayweather. He doesn’t think the UFC fighter will be able to land anything in the fight. If that’s the case, there are going to be a lot of hopping mad boxing and MMA fans on August 26. All those fans that are paying $99 to order the Mayweather-McGregor fight thinking it’s going to be an exciting fight.

If it ends up being a mismatch, it’s not going to present a pretty picture after the fight. That’s why it’s never a good thing for fighters to focus on greed by setting up mismatches against novices like McGregor. If the UFC fighter had at least fought one fight in a boxing ring against a quality opponent before the Mayweather fight, would let the fans know that this isn’t just a rip off payday for Mayweather and McGregor.

If Mayweather felt like he owed the fans, he should have paid them back already by making his fight against Andre Berto exciting. That was supposed to be the fight in which Mayweather paid the boxing public back for his boring fight against Pacquiao. In many ways, Mayweather-Berto was FAR more boring than Mayweather’s fight against Manny Pacquiao.

At least in the Pacquiao fight, he was pushing the action with one healthy arm, trying to force Mayweather to fight him. Pacquiao tried his best, but he was fighting with an injured shoulder and he couldn’t do much. Berto didn’t have the boxing skills or the motivation to try and push the fight against Mayweather. We certainly didn’t see Mayweather trying to make it exciting against Berto.

Mayweather looked half asleep and lazy in that fight. The thing is, Mayweather had told the boxing fans ahead of time that the Berto fight would be an exciting one. Mayweather failed to live up to his promises. Now the fans are expected to believe him this time that his fight against McGregor will be action packed, and will end with a knockout. If there is going to be a knockout in that fight, I suspect that it’ll be the 29-year-old McGregor who will be scoring it.

“I don’t think he wants to lose 90 per cent of his money, or even more,” said Mayweather. “Yes, I don’t like him at all.”

Honestly, who cares whether Mayweather likes McGregor or not. The boxing world wants to see a good fight for a change involving Mayweather instead of yet another boring fight. Last time Mayweather was involved in an exciting fight was in 2012 when he fought Miguel Cotto. Every fight since then has been boring.