By Allan Fox: Floyd Mayweather Jr. pulled a stunt on Thursday that could ended badly with Conor McGregor being injured. Mayweather ordered his huge heavily muscled bodyguards to swarm McGregor while he was sitting down on stage.
McGregor wasn’t sure what was happening, as he wasn’t informed that Mayweather would order his bodyguards to surround him. Mayweather said, ““yo, form Voltron,” and immediately his bodyguards swarmed the 28-year-old McGregor. Luckily for Mayweather, McGregor wasn’t hurt during the incident. Had McGregor been injured by Mayweather’s bodyguards, it would have led to the Mayweather-McGregor fight needing to be postponed. McGregor says he doesn’t want Mayweather to be forming stunt again by ordering his bodyguards to swarm him. There’s too much risk with moves like that involving guys that are on Mayweather’s payroll.
“We’re having a good time, but I’ll tell you what, if those [expletive] juiceheads [do that again], I’ll slap the hell out of all of them,” McGregor said to mmafigting.com. “If something like that happens at the next one, something will have to happen.”
McGregor and UFC president Dana White can always complain about this to Showtime to make sure that Mayweather isn’t able to order his bodyguards to continue to swarm McGregor in future press conferences. That kind of thing has too much involved. What would happen if McGregor hurt one of Mayweather’s bodyguards? These guys likely aren’t skilled MMA fighters. Someone could get hurt.
I doubt that McGregor would carry out his threat to tee off on the bodyguards but you can understand his frustration. I don’t think it was a good move for Mayweather to do that. It looked like he was trying to intimidate McGregor in a weird way that made no sense. It’s nice that Mayweather has bodyguards, but they’re not going to be in the ring on August 26 to protect him from McGregor. What’s the point in trying to intimidate McGregor like this?
McGregor should make sure an incident doesn’t take place again. It doesn’t make sense for McGregor or any fighter to be put in a situation where they can be injured by a group of bodyguards that are ordered to swarm him. Anything could have happened. Even the crowd could have gotten involved. When you have a brawl on stage, you never know what can happen. That’s you don’t pull stunts like that. The stunt didn’t make the Mayweather-McGregor New York press conference more exciting, because the boxing fans couldn’t even see McGregor through the huge group of bodyguards.
If the idea is to sell the Mayweather vs. McGregor fight, the fans need to be able to see McGregor at all times when he’s on stage. Having McGregor blocked by a large group of bodyguards that the boxing fans do not know and do not care to know, it just seemed like a poorly thought out move. McGregor was the best thing about the Mayweather-McGregor press conference on Thursday. He’s the one that was the far more compelling person to watch when the two fighters were on stage. McGregor’s sound bites were a lot more interesting than hearing Mayweather repeat himself from the things he said during Wednesday’s press conference. Why spoil the press conference by ordering bodyguards to surround the only interesting fighter on stage in McGregor? It was a dumb move on Mayweather’s part. McGregor is the one that is selling PPV buys, why take away his time on stage by having a bunch of body guards obscure the view of the boxing fans?
“Juicehead fools,” McGregor said. “I don’t know, man. I didn’t even see them until they were on top of me. I was like, ‘what?’ and then everybody was pushing and shoving. But, handbags, we call that back where I come from. It means it’s nothing, it’s just handbags. It’s just a term we use.”
There were so many bodyguards surrounding McGregor that if he was struck by one of them, you wouldn’t be able to see which one did the striking. Mayweather needs to tip McGregor off if he’s going to pull stunts like this in the future. The event organizers need to get control over the press conferences as well. If McGregor brought in 6 angry pit-bull dogs on the stage and then commanded them to go after Mayweather while holding them back on a tiny leash, I think Mayweather wouldn’t be too happy about it. He’d complain that if the leash had broken, he’d have had a pack of dogs on him. Bodyguards obviously aren’t dogs, but there’s a risk of injury when you have stunts like the one that took place on Thursday. Mayweather and McGregor need to be seen while they’re on stage. All the extra people should be off the stage and that includes bodyguards, management and promoters in my view. They get in the way of the people that the boxing and MMA fans really want to see.
If Mayweather wants to help drum up interest in his fight with McGregor, he’d be better off getting a good public relations guy that could give him good material to say to the public when he’s on stage. Mayweather repeats himself too much. He needs to have new material for each press conference. Instead of Mayweather walking up to Dana White each time and saying the same thing that he said at the previous press conference, he should have some new things to say. It’s not helpful for Mayweather to be repeating himself.