By Jeff Aronow: Floyd Mayweather Jr chose to pick last Saturday’s loss by Conor McGregor to Dustin Poirer to dump on him about how fans love him and have hate for him, which he views as racism of some form.
McGregor was taken out by a blizzard of shots by the heavy-handed Poirer in the second round last night in their rematch at UFC 257. It wasn’t a mismatch by any means.
McGregor was fighting on an even level with Poirer until he was caught with a brutal left hook in round two. It was one of those shots that would have hurt anybody, but it was worse for McGregor because he failed to grab Poirer to keep him from landing follow up shots.
The retired Mayweather, who defeated McGregor four years ago in a massively successful event, took to Instagram last night and unloaded on the 32-year-old UFC star.
The gist of Mayweather’s issue with McGregor is that he views him as a “con artist”, and he says he can’t be him and that he’s unable to back up his trash talk the way he can.
Mayweather says he’s hated for his trash talk, whereas McGregor is loved. It’s unclear what the actual connection to racism is, though. Some fans dislike Mayweather not because of his trash talking. To be fair, McGregor is entertaining when he trash-talks because he’s got charisma and his comedic ability. He’s an entertainer outside of the ring.
What he says to his fans hilarious, and he has a way of talking that makes people want to listen. We saw when Mayweather and McGregor were on the same stage trash-talking, he wasn’t on the same level as the Irish fighter.
Mayweather wasn’t nearly s entertaining, and one got the sense that McGregor was doing all the heavy lifting in the promotion or their fight. He was the one that was grabbing headlines and entertaining fans.
It wasn’t a situation where fans hated Mayweather for his trash talking. It was more of a situation where he was boring in comparison to McGregor. To be sure, McGregor is nowhere near as talented in his combat skills as Mayweather, but he is a far better trash talker.
A lot of fans have issues with Mayweather with his choice of opposition. They don’t like the way Mayweather has chosen to fight guys like McGregor and kickboxer Tenshin Nasukawa in retirement rather than boxers.
And they certainly weren’t pleased with Mayweather’s recent announcement that he was coming back to fight Youtuber Logan Paul. If Mayweather wants to be loved like McGregor, he’s going to have to put his energy on fighting guys that the fans respect.
McGregor wasn’t cherry-picking last night in facing Dustin Poirer. This was a competitive fight on paper and not a mismatch like we’ve seen from Mayweather with some of his fights over the years.
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