By Sean McDaniel: Conor McGregor doesn’t believe for a second that former 5-division world champion Floyd Mayweather Jr. will come forward all night long looking to mix it up with him on August 26. If Mayweather does take the fight to the 29-year-old Irish fighter, he says he’s going to make quick work of him. McGregor doubts Mayweather will be able to stand up to his big power punches once he starts connecting.
Mayweather-McGregor will be fighting on Showtime pay-per-view at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, Nevada. Mayweather, 40, has been installed as a big favorite by the odds-makers to defeat the UFC star and send him back to his sport in defeat.
“The tale of the fight will be waiting to see who takes a step back first. We all know Floyd is a great defensive boxer and he isn’t going to keep coming forward like he says. If he does, it’s going to be a quick night for me,” said McGregor.
Mayweather at this point is on cruise control in his fights. He says frequently talks about how he’s going to be aggressive and make it exciting in the build-up to his different fights, but when he gets inside the ring, he’s ALWAYS fighting in a defensive manner, blocking shots, moving around the ring and working exclusively at not getting hit. That’s the Mayweather style and it’s totally unchangeable.
Mayweather can’t change the way he fights no matter how many promises he makes to be aggressive. He’s not going to do it. It’s like someone with bad habit that they swear they’re going to stop. The next day, they go right back to what they were doing before. Mayweather will never change. He might end his career on August 26 against McGregor, but he’s going to go out fighting in the same defensive manners as always.
What this means for McGregor is he’s going to need to chase Mayweather around the ring, because he won’t stand his ground if his power is more than he can handle. Let me clear this up. Mayweather WILL stand and fight if McGregor’s power isn’t too much. But if McGregor hits Mayweather with a heavy shot that worries him, then he’ll get on his bike and run he remainder of the fight in the same way he did against Saul Canelo Alvarez.
McGregor is slightly lighter than the 22-year-old Canelo that fought Mayweather in 2013. Canelo weighed 165 pounds after making weight at 152 lbs. for his catch-weight fight with Mayweather. Canelo failed to use his size in the first 8 rounds to pressure Mayweather. Canelo chose to box Mayweather, and it was a really stupid decision on his part. You have to question the brain trust in Canelo’s came that came up with that gem. But after the 8th, Canelo started to pressure Mayweather and land some shots.
From that point on, Mayweather was on his bike and for the last 4 rounds, as he ran out the clock to preserve the win. If McGregor is going to beat Mayweather, he’s going to need a good set of wheels to cut off the ring and chase him around the ring. The good news is Mayweather is 40, and can’t run for too long without backing up against the ropes to rest his weary legs.
McGregor will then have his chance to try and mug Mayweather. If he’s got the infighting ability, he might just do the job and score a knockout. But he can forget about winning a decision against Mayweather, because that will not happen in that fight. Mayweather knows how to win rounds and that’ll be his focus – to steal rounds.
“I have a game plan and I will execute it perfectly, like always. I have been boxing my whole life so this is not a new experience for me,” said McGregor. ”I will rule over MMA and boxing with an iron fist after August 26th.”
We’ve heard about McGregor’s game plan, and hopefully it’s a lot better than the rumors that are floating around. McGregor is not going to mug Mayweather on the inside. That’s been tried before by other fighters, and Mayweather will be fully ready to stop that from happening on August 26. The southpaw McGregor’s best chance for success is to look to land one of his big left hand power shots to the head of Mayweather in the first 5 rounds to hurt him.
McGregor needs to pattern his fighting style after former middleweight knockout artist Julian Jackson in his fight against Terry Norris. McGregor probably doesn’t have Jackson’s punching power, but he still needs to follow his game plan. Jackson was loading up on everything against Norris, and forcing him to move around the ring. Jackson didn’t lesson up on his power shots in order to land them. He didn’t mind missing shots. In round 2, Jackson finally caught Norris with a huge right hand that badly hurt him. Jackson then finished him off with a left hook to send Norris down.
McGregor’s best chance of beating Mayweather is to swing for the fences in the first 5 rounds and hope that he can hurt him with one of his big punches to score the knockout. If McGregor uses that approach, he at least has a chance of winning. If McGregor tries to box Mayweather, it’s going to end badly for him.
”I’m going to be a much bigger man than Floyd when I we step in the ring for the fight and I think that makes a difference,” said McGregor.
McGregor, 5’9”, will be a little bit taller than the 58” Mayweather, and he’ll have possibly 5-10 lbs. of weight on him. It’s not going to be a huge weight advantage by any means. McGregor is kidding himself if he truly believes he’s going to be the much bigger fighter. Mayweather will likely come into the fight around 155 to 160 after rehydrating. Mayweather says he knows that McGregor is weighing 160 lbs. right now. Someone from McGregor’s camp apparently is feeding Mayweather information as far as his weight and even the game plan that he has for the fight. It might be in McGregor’s best interest to switch out his sparring partners, because someone from McGregor’s camp is relaying information to Mayweather. If I was McGregor, I’d take a big broom and sweep out the entire training camp of people and hangers on from top to bottom. I’d get them all out and start from scratch. All photographers would need to go, as well as the video cameras. It might not matter though. Even if McGregor finds some sparring partners that are willing to keep their mouths shut about his game plan, it’s not as if Mayweather won’t be able to figure out quickly what he’s doing inside the ring and make adjustments. That’s one of the reasons why McGregor should scrap whatever ideas he has to try and trick Mayweather with a clever game plan, as it’s not going to work.
McGregor is able to trick the UFC fighters with the different things he does during his fights in that organization, but those guys aren’t Mayweather. They don’t have his boxing skills, and they can’t adapt quickly on the fly the way that he does. McGregor would be so much better off if he just decided to go head hunting with Mayweather by loading up with every shot the way that Julian Jackson did during his career. To be sure, McGregor will miss with a lot of the punches he throws if he loads up with everything, but when he does eventually connect with a big punch to the chin of Mayweather, he’ll have a better chance of hurting him if he’s putting everything he has on the shot. It sounds desperate, but that’s the reality that McGregor faces. He’s never going to outbox a fighter like Mayweather. That would never happen in this lifetime.
”I am no stranger to being the underdog on paper. I am a seasoned veteran and I am confident that I am the better man. After Saturday, August 26th, I will be a god of boxing,” said McGregor.
McGregor shouldn’t get carried away with some of the things he says, as he won’t be taken seriously by the boxing fans if he just sounds unhinged the way he’s sounding now. He’s an underdog for a reason. He needs to admit that he’s going very little chance of winning and leave it at that. For McGregor to be saying he’s going to be the “God of boxing,” it sounds like a comedian. Even if McGregor were to best an aging fighter like 40-year-old Mayweather, he would be over-matched against a true junior middleweight like Jermell Charlo, Erislandy Lara, Jarrett Hurd or Demetrius Andrade. Those are guys the top guys in the 154lb division, not Mayweather. For this fight, Mayweather said he would accommodate McGregor for weight by moving up to 154 so that he wouldn’t have to drain down to fight him at 147. Mayweather is really a pumped up super featherweight that fights at welterweight. If McGregor had to fight a real junior middleweight like Charlo or Lara, he’d get a boxing lesson and end up being knocked out. Those are both excellent fighters.
Even if McGregor gets lucky and beats Mayweather on August 26, he’s not going to go far in the 154lb division unless his management carefully selects another old timer without size like the 5’7” Miguel Cotto. I don’t think there’s any money in a McGregor vs. Cotto fight though. Cotto’s days of being a PPV attraction are done. He hurt them by being inactive. McGregor would be better off going after the winner of the Saul Canelo Alvarez vs. Golovkin fight if he wanted a big payday if he gets past Mayweather. Naturally, a rematch with Mayweather would be priority No.1 for McGregor if he beats him on August 26, but there’s no telling what he would do. He might not be interested in facing McGregor again if he gets knocked out by him.
Mayweather might finally recognize that father time has shown up to tell him that he’s done and that he should retire from boxing. A bad knockout loss for Mayweather would very likely cause him to retire instead of risk getting knocked out again by the younger and stronger McGregor. Boxing is a young man’s sport. It’s not a sport for old rich men in their 40s, who no longer compete on a regular basis. If Mayweather were to fight McGregor a second time, he would be risking his health and of course his legacy along with it. There’s a lesson here for old timers like Mayweather. When you stop fighting for more than a year, it’s time to pack it in and stay away from the sport, because you’re likely to get hurt if you keep coming back to replenish your bank account to refill it.
“The critics say that Floyd has been there before; they discredit my training, my skills, and my accomplishments. This isn’t new to me though, just like boxing isn’t new to me,” said McGregor.
Of course, boxing is new to McGregor. Who is he trying to kid? What he’s been doing in the UFC isn’t boxing. That’s more like jabbing with single pot shots.
McGregor throws mostly short punches, and the reason why he scores so many knockouts is the light 4oz gloves they use in the UFC. When you get hit by shots from a fighter wearing 4oz gloves, it does damage. It’s very hard to take a punch with the lighter UFC gloves. McGregor hasn’t learned how to box like normal boxers. The type of punches that McGregor throws in the UFC would do nothing in boxing, because he doesn’t put his body behind his shots. He reaches out and throws short shots.
Again, the reason why they do damage in the UFC is because of the lighter 4oz gloves. With the 10oz gloves that McGregor might be fighting Mayweather with, he’s going to need to sit down on his shots a lot more and put his body behind them if he wants to hurt him. He’s not going to hurt Mayweather if he doesn’t throw his shots with proper form. Hopefully, McGregor has learned how to throw punches by now. He’s not going to hurt Mayweather with the way he’s been fighting in the UFC. His shots won’t possess enough power to do any damage to Mayweather with the heavier gloves in boxing.