By Allan Fox: Conor McGregor has revealed his strategy for beating Floyd Mayweather Jr. in their boxing match on August 26, and it’s going to involve hi mauling the 40-year-old fighter from start to finish. The strategy is not that surprising though, as that’s a style that proved to be effective against Mayweather in the past by Marcos Maidana and Jose Luis Castillo.
Mayweather needs space for him to land his speedy shots. If you take that space away from him, he becomes very average on the inside. In fact, Mayweather is less than average on the inside. He’s barely adequate. A good inside fighter like McGregor could keep Mayweather pinned against the ropes, helpless to get his shots off. What we don’t know though is how good McGregor is on the inside. We’ve seen him throw short punches when he’s had a fighter trapped against the cage in the octagon in his UFC fights, but we’ve not seen fight for prolonged periods.
“He’s just too damn small. He’s getting mauled and that’s the end of it,” said McGregor to Fighthub.
Jeff Horn and Marcos Maidana are both examples of fighters with excellent mauling skills. Horn recently handed Manny Pacquiao his 7th career defeat after he mauled him for 12 rounds on July 2 in Brisbane, Australia. Maidana used even better mauling technique to give Adrien Broner and Mayweather fits in their fights.
Mayweather looks thinner than McGregor, and a little bit shorter. That won’t matter unless McGregor can take advantage of his size to rough Mayweather up on the inside and not let him get distance. Mayweather will probably run from McGregor if he has problems with his mauling/pressuring fighting. If Mayweather runs, McGregor is going to have a hard time catching up with him. The boxing fans will obviously boo if the fight turns out to be a cat and mouse affair. The tickets for the Mayweather-McGregor fight are expensive for their August 26 fight at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, Nevada.
The fans are expecting a fight, not a track meet with Mayweather showing off his 100 meter speed. The fight has a steep asking price of $89 to $99 on Showtime PPV. If Mayweather has any thoughts of a potential rematch between them in the octagon or in a boxing match, he needs to fight in a stationary manner like he did for much of his first fight against Marcos Maidana. Mayweather fought with his back against the ropes for the first 6 rounds of that fight. In the last six rounds, Mayweather got on his bike and evaded the Argentinian brawler to squeak out an ugly win. The fight showed that Mayweather is extremely vulnerable when he’s being mauled. Maidana was clearly the better fighter of the two in the first 6 rounds. A lot of boxing fans scored 4 of the first 6 rounds for Maidana. He was landing some monstrous shots to the head of Mayweather, who couldn’t stop shots with his shoulder roll. Maidana’s punches were frequently thrown from a downward angle. Mayweather had no ability to block those punches with any regularity, especially when he was ducking low. Maidana was hitting him on the top of his head.
“I have a very high fight IQ,” McGregor said. “I understand when to go and when not to. I’m very confident whether it’s in a ring or an octagon. I’m going to have my way with him.”
The positive news for McGregor is he has fast sparring partners, who will show him clearly that he cannot fight Mayweather on the outside or even at medium distance if he wants to win.
McGregor can’t fight Mayweather the way that Manny Pacquiao did by staying on the outside and trying to use an in and out style of fighting. That didn’t work for Pacquiao, as he kept getting tagged with pot shots while he was at a distance. When Pacquiao would try and come forward to land, Mayweather would catch him with hard right hands to the head repeatedly. The crowd cheered loudly each time Mayweather would nail Pacquiao with a right hand or a jab while he was trying to go on the attack. Eventually, Pacquiao stopped attacking as much, and he ended up losing the fight. If Pacquiao had worked his way to the inside on Mayweather and stayed there for the entire fight the way that Maidana did, he would have stood a better chance of beating him. The 5’6” Pacquiao didn’t have the frame or the weight to fight Mayweather on the inside like Maidana did. Maidana weighed 165 pounds for his first fight against Mayweather. The weight allowed Maidana to get the better of Mayweather at close range. Maidana was like a middleweight in the ring.
McGregor could end up even heavier than 165. He looks pretty big right now. I wouldn’t be surprised if McGregor is walking around at 170 to 175 lbs. If McGregor can take the water weight off to get down to the 154 pound weight limit for the fight without draining himself, he’s going to be a force to be reckoned with on August 26. A big inside fighter like McGregor will be a nightmare for Mayweather. It doesn’t matter that McGregor doesn’t have a background in boxing. He knows how to maul fighters from fighting in the UFC. All it’ll take for McGregor to nullify Mayweather’s boxing ability is for him to press him against the ropes and not let him get any room to punch. All the punching will be from point blank range instead of from medium to long range. An inside fight favors McGregor in a huge way. He can fight on the inside. He’s obviously better when he’s at medium range, but he can’t afford to fight that way against the quicker and more elusive Mayweather. McGregor has got to maul Mayweather on the inside for him to get the win in this fight.
“Nobody knows that squared circle like me,” Mayweather said. “I know angles. I know where to touch you at. I know what you don’t like. I don’t have to watch your tapes. That’s something I’m blessed with. But, he’s unorthodox. So it’ll definitely be something different in the ring. I just have to keep my composure.”
When Mayweather talks of using angles, he’s refereeing to his ability to move to avoid getting hit. Mayweather doesn’t use angles to go on the attack. Mayweather comes straight at his opponents when looking to hit him. He’s never been one that used darting angles to go on the attack. He’s not a Manny Pacquiao type of fighter. The angles Mayweather uses are retreat/running angles that he uses to get out of the way of punches. I don’t know how well Mayweather will be able to move after being out of the ring for 2 long years since he retired in 2015. Mayweather’s ability to move around the ring will likely have taken a hit. If Mayweather has lost 20 percent of his mobility, that’s a substantial number. Mayweather’s mobility wasn’t that good in his last 2 fights. His legs looked old. I don’t think Mayweather is going to be able to move around the ring for 12 round against McGregor, and I don’t think he’ll want to do that. For there to be any chance at all for a rematch between the two, their fight on August 26 must be an acting one. Mayweather turned off the boxing fans with his last 2 fights against Andre Berto and Pacquiao. Mayweather fought both of those bouts in 1st gear, looking like he was preserving energy to avoid gassing out.
“Floyd is saying a lot about me tapping out, but he’s never had a true fight,” McGregor said. “He knows nothing about the game that I’m involved with. We’ll see who is quitting on August 26. When I look at a man’s skull, I’m able to tell how much damage he has to take. I look at his skull, he’ll not be able to take this shot and that’s it. I’ll not be surprised if it only goes one. He wore high heels this time. I was like, ‘what the [expletive] you doing with high heels on,’” said McGregor.
McGregor can punch. That was with 4 oz. gloves in the UFC. It might be a different story with him wearing 10 oz. gloves against Mayweather. His punches might not be nearly as hard with the added padding. Mayweather is the one that will be picking out the gloves for the fight. He’s probably going to pick out non-punchers gloves with plenty of padding around the knuckles. I think it goes without saying that the gloves Mayweather picks out will be the softer variety.
If McGregor stays on the inside, his power won’t be as good as it has been in the past in the UFC. He’ll be powerful, but not as powerful. It’s going to be a tiring fight if McGregor mauls Mayweather. That’s going to require a lot of wrestling to keep Mayweather pinned to the ropes. I don’t think Mayweather will get tired if he’s forced to fight like that. We’ll have to see. Mayweather has been resting for the last 2 years, and he’s now 40. He might not be able to fight a mauling type of match.