By Chris Williams: Floyd Mayweather Jr. is not looking past his wily opponent Conor McGregor for their fight on August 26. While some in the boxing world sees this as an easy fight for Mayweather, he says, “No,” it’s not going to be an easy fight for him. McGregor is a tough competitor and will be making it a real battle from start to finish in this fight.
Mayweather looked sensational in working out on Wednesday at the Ten Goose Boxing Gym in Van Nuys, California. Mayweather put in some hard work in showing dedication to the large crowd that assembled to watch the 40-year-old workout.
“You can’t touch me,” said Mayweather via the latimes.com in his lengthy workout. Mayweather isn’t taking it easy in his preparation for the 28-year-old McGregor, because he knows how much he has to lose if he were to get beaten by the popular UFC fighter. There’s a great deal that Mayweather can lose. The boxing fans would forget about Mayweather’s great legacy and would immediately tarnish him. Mayweather isn’t going to let that happen.
“I haven’t been off two years, really. I’ve been running, working. I’m not rusty, I’m ready,” said Mayweather.
Mayweather looked he’d never been away. You can tell that the man has been keeping himself in shape with regular workouts since his last fight in September 2015 against Andre Berto. Mayweather knows the importance of staying in shape. Mayweather looked like a cat during the workout, ready to pounce. It’s incredible to think that Mayweather has been out of action for 2 years. He looked like he’d never been away. Mayweather didn’t age. That’s scary part. It’s as if Mayweather has been in suspended state of animation where he’s stayed exactly where he was from the last fight against a hapless Andre Berto.
It’s bad news for poor McGregor, because he’s going to have to deal with a much younger fighter than he thinks he’ll be fighting. Mayweather is 40, but he’s more like someone in their late 20s. Mayweather is aging like Bernard Hopkins. a fighter that was still fighting at an elevated level in his late 40s.
Mayweather’s fight with McGregor could bring in over 4 million pay-per-view buys.
The sky is the limit for this promotion. The only thing that might hurt the number of buys the fight pulls in is the fact that it won’t be televised on HBO and Showtime like Mayweather’s fight against Manny Pacquiao was in 2015. Having the Mayweather-Pacquiao fight televised on both networks likely helped the promotion of the fight to make it much bigger than it ended up being.
Mayweather is looking “beautiful. A lot of people might think even after two years in a fight of this magnitude that he shouldn’t fight a guy like McGregor, but he don’t take it like that. Floyd’s thing is he needs to get ready to fight someone like Mike Tyson,” said Mayweather’s assistant trainer Nate Jones to the latimes.com.
Mayweather isn’t going to let McGregor take his unbeaten record from him when the two of them start going at it on August 26. Mayweather is going to do what it takes for him to get win number 50 to break Rocky Marciano’s 49-0 record. That’s going to be a big feather in Mayweather’s cap for him to win his 50th fight to go 50-0. This is a record that has stood for a long time.
Mayweather won’t have a draw to mar his perfect record. It’ll be a straight 50-0 record, and I think it might stand for a long, long tie in boxing. The thing is, Mayweather can go well beyond 50-0 if he wants to. It’s up to him how far he wants to go in breaking records each time he fights. He’s got so much time still, because there’s no one in the welterweight division that can touch him right now. Eventually someone might show up that can give Mayweather some problems, but right now there’s no one at 17 that can give him any problems. Mayweather hasn’t’ said anything about whether he wants to return to fighting boxers. His thing is to take this one fight against McGregor, collect the green stuff and then go from there. If Mayweather decides he wants to grace the boxing world with his presence, then we’ll see the man fight on if he sees someone else he wants to fight. Who knows? We might even see rematch between Mayweather and McGregor.
”Losing is like death to him. He’ll never take anyone lightly. Did you see his work today? It’s amazing. He’s taking on kids 22-23 years old and burning them out,” said Jones. “If he loses a fight like this — losing is impossible to Floyd — his legacy is everything.”
Mayweather’s fight with McGregor is going to shake up the boxing world with the amount of interest this fight is going to wind up generating. This is a better fight than Mayweather’s mismatch with Filipino star Manny Pacquiao. The reason why it’s a better fight is McGregor is bigger, stronger, younger and healthier than Pacquiao was when he fought Mayweather in 2015. By that point in Pacquiao’s career, he was just a shell of his former self, and he had nothing in his game that could give Mayweather problems. Pacquiao was totally outclassed in a bad mismatch.
Mayweather did Pacquiao a big favor by agreeing to fight him in the first pale, because there was no reason for Mayweather to take the fight with Pacquiao. He’d been exposed as an aging fighter in his back to back losses to Tim Bradley and Juan Manuel Marquez. If Pacquiao hadn’t asked Mayweather for a fight at the basketball game the two fighters attended, then I don’t think the fight would have ever taken place. It would have been better for them and for the boxing world if they hadn’t fought. McGregor has a lot more game to him at this point than Pacquiao, so this should be a great fight for as long as it lasts. Unlike a lot of people, I’m not counting out McGregor.
It’s going to be fun once Mayweather and McGregor start trash talking each other in the weeks to come. Mayweather appears to be more than ready to get in the gutter with McGregor to trash talk him to a standstill.