IN THE AFTERMATH of last night’s money fight between Floyd Mayweather and Conor McGregor, the Irishman’s former sparring partner Paulie Malignaggi was, as is his wont, full of chatter.
Speaking near the conclusion of Showtime’s live broadcast of the event, ‘The Magic Man’, whose spars with McGregor and subsequent tirades made for quite the sub-plot to the Vegas mega-event, paid a begrudging respect to the UFC lightweight champion, and in particular his awkwardness during the opening exchanges.
He did, however, criticise McGregor’s claims that referee Robert Byrd had stopped the contest prematurely, suggesting the 29-year-old didn’t throw enough shots in round 10 to justify a stay of execution.
“I think he started the fight very well, actually,” Malignaggi said. “A tactical brilliance almost – it was effective in the early stages.
“Now, having said that, the mental pressure Floyd was applying… Conor doesn’t have enough experience in the ring, so it’s going to fatigue him a little bit faster, because he sees this guy walking him down.
“Even if Conor was being effective, the constant walking him down is going to cause fatigue physically but also mentally; ‘I got to get this guy out of my face.’
“Conor is used to hurting guys, he’s not hurting him [Mayweather]. It got to the point where he was able to fire back less and less.
As far as the stoppage is concerned, and we saw Conor saying, ‘I would have liked to end up on my back, I didn’t even go down’ – here’s the problem with that: you have to punch back. He didn’t punch back for over a minute in that final sequence. If you want to really fight, you’ve got to show the referee you want to fight. You can’t say afterwards, ‘I wanted to fight.’
“If you don’t throw a punch back for a minute while you’re getting assaulted, you gotta get stopped. You can’t put the referee in that kind of position. So, as much as he wants to say he wanted to continue fighting, he got a chance to show that. Okay, the exhaustion – we understand that. The body shots from Floyd Mayweather. Again, the mental pressure was effective, and eventually it wore him down.”
Hours later, the former two-weight boxing world champion sat down with Kugan Cassius of IFL TV, offering a somewhat more candid dissection of McGregor’s performance away from the paying masses.
Malignaggi reiterated his belief that McGregor’s shot technique detracts from his power, but did acknowledge some of the southpaw debutante’s better work.
“Obviously people now know that I’m not a hater, I’m not lying: the guy can’t punch,” Malignaggi told IFL.
I mean, you saw it. He only throws arm-punches. He doesn’t know how to translate his weight on his shots in boxing. There was nothing on those shots. I mean, I was ringside – there was nothing on those shots. I was punching harder than him in the sparring, Floyd was punching harder than him tonight. He doesn’t know how to punch hard in boxing because there’s a way you translate your weight into your shots which he just doesn’t do.
“But don’t get me wrong, a couple of decent body shots he threw tonight – I was impressed. Even a couple of uppercuts. With that he was impressive, but overall, it was a lot of tippy-tappy shots he was throwing.”
As for his recent rendez-vous with ‘Money’ Mayweather, in which the now-retired-again pound-for-pound king claimed Malignaggi had been sent to spar with McGregor in order to spy on the former Crumlin BC man, Malignaggi was emphatic in his denial that he had been feeding Mayweather information regarding McGregor’s approach.
“Floyd didn’t ask me a single question about Conor. He didn’t give a shit. He just said he was going to beat his ass.”
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