Mayweather-McGregor to use 8oz gloves for super-fight

By Boxing News - 08/16/2017 - Comments

Image: Mayweather-McGregor to use 8oz gloves for super-fight

By Allan Fox: Conor McGregor will at least have a puncher’s chance of knocking out 40-year-old Floyd Mayweather Jr. in their fight in 10 days from now, as the Nevada State Athletic Commission has given the green light for the two fighters to use 8oz gloves instead of the standard 10oz gloves.

This is good news for McGregor, because he absolutely needs the lighter gloves for him to have a chance of knocking out the former 5-division world champion Mayweather. McGregor will need to take advantage of the lighter 8oz gloves for him to have a chance of winning the fight. Mayweather is already promising to KO McGregor.

Mayweather’s promises mean zero, as he assured the boxing fans that his last 2 fights against Manny Pacquiao and Andre Berto would be exciting affairs, and neither of them came close to being even slightly interesting. There were many angry boxing fans after both fights. Those fans have obviously forgotten how boring Mayweather was against Pacquiao and Berto, because he’s likely to get those same fans to purchase his August 26 fight against McGregor on Showtime PPV.

Besides the gloves that have been decided for the Mayweather-McGregor fight, the referee will be Robert Byrd, who has worked 682 fights during his career. Byrd was the referee for the first Andre “SOG” Ward vs. Sergey “Krusher” Kovalev fight on November 19 last year. Byrd took a lot of criticism from boxing fans for his hands-off approach to controlling the wrestling that Ward did on the inside.

Rather than breaking the two fighters, Byrd stood and watched and didn’t step in to peel Ward off Kovalev. The result was the fight was very boring to watch for the last 6 rounds. Hopefully, Byrd does a better job in the Mayweather-McGregor fight. Byrd might not need to separate the two fighters, however, as McGregor is very good on the inside in handling fighters that attempt to wrestle him. Mayweather isn’t likely to want to take the risk of using a lot of holding the way that Ward did against Kovalev. It would give McGregor an opportunity for him to use his superior wrestling skills to belt Mayweather on the inside. We’ll see if Byrd needs to penalize McGregor if he starts using his MMA tactics against Mayweather.

Byrd worked Mayweather’s 2013 fight against Robert “The Ghost” Guerrero in Las Vegas, Nevada. Byrd had an easy time in that fight due to how over-matched the painfully slow Guerrero was. It was hardly a fight.

The judges for the fight are as follows: Burt Clements, Dave Moretti and Guido Cavalleri.