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Somebody's '0'

Rory McIlroy fears Mayweather and McGregor are conspiring behind the scenes

‘I just don’t know what that zero on Mayweather’s record is worth, and that’s the thing.’

WORLD NUMBER FOUR Rory McIlroy has voiced his concern that Floyd Mayweather and Conor McGregor might take the paying public for a ride when they finally trade leather in Las Vegas on Saturday night.

McIlroy, who has crossed paths with McGregor on a number of occasions and describes the Crumlin mixed martial artist and boxing debutante as ‘humble’, fears both fighters might be laughing at the public behind the scenes, and went as far as to suggest they could conspire to forge a rematch should Mayweather see fit to lose his undefeated record.

Speaking at his press conference ahead of this week’s Northern Trust, McIlroy first spoke of his admiration for the Irishman when asked if McGregor might spring an upset at the T-Mobile Arena.

“Certainly that’s all I’ve done is follow the build up to this thing. Now that I’m off Twitter and social media, all I do is watch YouTube videos of Conor McGregor,” McIlroy said.

“I’m intrigued. He [McGregor] talks a good game. If you just listen to his press conferences and what he says, you would think that this guy, he’s the one with the 50-0 boxing record.

“It’s amazing. I’m a big admirer of him. He talks about visualization and the law of attraction and all this stuff that he believes in it and he vocalizes it, and he has the courage to say what he thinks. I’m a believer in that stuff, and I’m a big advocate of that.

And some of the stuff he does wouldn’t be my cup of tea, but he believes 100 percent in himself and he believes he’s going to go out there on Saturday night and shock the world.

The four-time major winner then relayed his concern that the four-time lineal boxing champion might value another grand sum of cash more so than the ’0′ on his record, and pondered as to whether it might be possible that both Mayweather and McGregor might conspire behind the scenes to fix the fight.

McIlroy hopes Saturday’s protagonists aren’t ‘having a laugh’ at fans’ expense behind the scenes.

“I’m interested just to see how it all plays out, but I just fear that they do all this trash-talking and they go behind the scenes and they are having a laugh and thinking, ‘I can’t believe we are talking all this public for a ride.’

“We are all buying into it and they are like, ‘can you believe these people believe this?’ I just hope it doesn’t turn into it and I hope it’s not in any way fixed.

“It’s amazing, like we were talking about, imagine McGregor knocks him out in the first couple of rounds. They would get even more for the rematch. The rematch would be even bigger.

I just don’t know what that zero on Mayweather’s record is worth, and that’s the thing. That’s his legacy. If he goes down and lies down for 10 seconds at some point in that, you know, is that worth making an extra few 100 million? That’s sort of up to him.

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