Floyd Mayweather says he’s in for the fight of his life with Irish mixed martial arts champion Conor McGregor in their much-anticipated Las Vegas bout on August 26. “He’s a lot younger,” Mayweather told ESPN last week. “When you look at myself and Conor McGregor on paper, he’s taller, has a longer reach, he’s a bigger man from top to bottom. He’s a lot younger, so youth is on his side,” Mayweather said of the 29-year-old McGregor. “And I’ve been off a couple of years. And I’m in my 40s. So, if you look at everything on paper, it leans toward Conor McGregor.”
Wow. Mayweather’s assessment sounded so much like the talking points coming out McGregor’s camp the only thing missing was an Irish brogue. Is it possible that the 49-0 Mayweather, the best pound-for-pound boxer in the world before he retired two years ago, thinks McGregor has the upper hand? Nope. Floyd’s just pumping money into the market.
Mayweather is a great boxer, and one of sport’s all-time best businessmen. In 2015 he was Forbes magazine’s highest-paid athlete. His net worth is estimated at around $400 million, and his career earnings are likely to soar past $1 billion with the McGregor fight. Where most boxers, even champions, are dependent on their business handlers for their living, Mayweather wisely took control of the means of production and in 2007 exercised a clause freeing him from his contract with Top Rank and started promoting his own fights. In 2013, he jumped from HBO to Showtime for a six-fight deal that guaranteed him at least $30 million per fight, including the massive pay-per-view payout (more than $200 million) from his May 2015 fight with Manny Pacquiao. Mayweather is keen to preserve the integrity of his nickname, “Money,” by making sure there’s enough interest in the McGregor fight to bring in the pay-per-view dollars.
The thing you have to understand about Mayweather is that he never leaves money on the table. For instance, lots of viewers who tuned in for his September 2013 fight with Canelo Alvarez couldn’t figure out why Justin Bieber was part of Mayweather’s pre-fight entourage. “About 90 minutes prior to the fight, Bieber made a clumsy entrance into Mayweather’s dressing room, barging in with hand-slaps and bro-hugs,” writes ESPN’s Tim Keown. “Mayweather nodded in Bieber’s direction but otherwise ignored him. Thirty minutes later, though, came the crystallizing moment: Mayweather wordlessly called Bieber over, put his arm around him and said, ‘Take a photo and send it out to your followers.’ For a moment, Bieber looked a part of Money’s posse. . . . And assuming even an infinitesimal portion of those 48,735,521 Beliebers persuaded their parents to buy the fight, they juiced the fight’s record payday of nearly $150 million in pay-per-views. Suddenly, the pairing that makes no sense at all made all the sense in the world.”
Fast forward to today and Mayweather is worried that fans might be losing interest in the McGregor fight because the Irishman’s camp looks like a mess.
Two weeks ago, retired welterweight Paulie Malignaggi headed out to Las Vegas to spar with McGregor, and left abruptly after McGregor’s team leaked pictures and videos of a sparring session which suggested that the MMA fighter got the better of the former two-time world champion. In one disputed scene, Malignaggi hits the canvas—by knockdown, says McGregor’s camp, including president of the United Fighting Championship Dana White. Malignaggi says he was pushed, and urged Team McGregor release film of the entire session, which will show, says the Brooklyn fighter, that he beat McGregor all 12 rounds.
After leaving the UFC champion’s camp, Malignaggi said that McGregor “whimpers like a girl” when hit by body shots. “This guy is one of the biggest dirtbags I’ve ever met in my life—bar none,” said Malignaggi, whose profession is not short on big dirtbags.
“I was amazed at what a dirtbag this person is. I don’t care if we never speak again. My life is fine if I never see Conor McGregor again,” he said. (And Malignaggi had even harsher words for White.)
McGregor’s camp showed it’s a little short on class by releasing pictures making someone else look bad to make their fighter look good. By contrast, Mayweather’s training partners say that Floyd has nothing but respect for the guys who come to his camp to help him prepare, fighters who know they’re going to get outclassed by Mayweather every time they step into the ring.
If the footage was indeed altered by McGregor’s people it won’t have been the first time. Last summer, South African boxer Chris Van Heerden got mad when edits made it look like McGregor owned him, so he released a fuller account of the action that showed otherwise. The fact is, it’s not a good sign that McGregor is making noise about thumping sparring partners. If he did manhandle a retired and out of shape Malignaggi, as he claims, then it’s hardly worth the distraction. If he didn’t, if he’s revising reality to make himself look like a better boxer, it suggests that both the fighter and his camp realize he’s overmatched and are trying to camouflage his lack of boxing skills. Film editors aren’t much help in a boxer’s corner—unless McGregor’s also doubles as a cut-man. Because that fellow is likely to see a lot of blood August 26.
McGregor’s open workout for the press last week hardly convinced fight fans he’s ready for Mayweather (here’s Mayweather’s open workout). The Irishman is a tough guy who knows what it takes to be a champion, expert commentator Teddy Atlas remarked on ESPN—“he knows what to do when the wolf is at the door,” Mike Tyson’s former assistant trainer uttered lyrically—but his boxing skills, continued Atlas, are amateur at best. Sure he’s quick, said Atlas, but nothing like Mayweather. (Here’s a clip of Floyd working the mitts with his uncle Roger Mayweather—note not just the speed, but the timing and reflexes as well.) The two things you’re taught when you first walk into a boxing gym, MMA champion Chael Sonnen told the ESPN audience, are to keep your hands up and your chin down. McGregor, said Sonnen, does neither. Those are two obvious chinks in the armor that would make him vulnerable to any boxer, amateur or professional.
Then there’s something else I noticed during McGregor’s workout. He’s a southpaw—which allegedly gives Mayweather trouble, but not so much trouble that he’s ever lost to one—but he switches sometimes to an orthodox stance. This isn’t that unusual, and really terrific pros that have power in both hands and are exceptionally agile, like Terence Crawford, the 29-year-old undefeated champion out of Omaha, Nebraska, can use it to their advantage. Switching angles like that, and popping with both hands hard can really baffle opponents—but you need to know what you’re doing, which comes from long practice in the gym learning the footwork and the distance from your opponent required to switch sides, or else you get tangled up, which increases your chances of getting hit hard. Then you have to practice the move sparring, and finally try it out in a real fight. But McGregor has very few of these hours under his belt. If he tries it with Mayweather—not exactly the appropriate venue for experimental labwork—my bet is that the second or third time he’s stepping over he’ll walk into a big right hand. And Mayweather has much more power than he’s typically given credit for.
It might come as a surprise to casual observers that in almost all of the betting so far something like 85 percent of the money—and 95 percent of the betting tickets—has come down on McGregor. That’s because it makes no sense to bet on Mayweather, the huge favorite. Here’s how the line has changed since November, months before the fight was announced in June. Mayweather opened at -2250, with the minus sign designating the favorite, and McGregor at +950. That means, to win $100 on Mayweather, you have to bet $2250. If you’re taking McGregor, a $100 bet will net you $950. Immediately after the fight was announced, it was -800 Mayweather and +500 McGregor, and as of August 12 it’s -500 Mayweather and +350 McGregor.
But the improved price on Mayweather—still an insanely huge favorite—doesn’t reflect McGregor’s improved chances, it only reflects the oddsmakers’ response to the amount of money out on McGregor. Presumably Mayweather’s Br’er Rabbit routine suggesting that McGregor looks great on paper is meant not only to generate PPV interest but also to further drive the odds down. (An $880,000 ticket on Mayweather this week, the largest bet so far on the fight, would earn $160,000—the kind of safe bet typical of hedge fund managers, not professional gamblers.) Mayweather is a famously degenerate gambler who bets on everything, including, it’s assumed, himself. McGregor says he’s betting a million euros on himself, and encourages friends to help themselves to an easy payday.
Almost no one’s buying it. Ring announcer David Diamante says McGregor is the worst opponent Mayweather has ever faced. “I don’t see any scenario in a boxing match where McGregor’s going to win,” Diamante said. “You don’t want the guy getting hurt, number one. Number two, from a boxing standpoint, many people have tried to crack the Mayweather code . . . I believe that McGregor, if he wants any chance, needs to get on him really early and try and rough him up.”
Lots of fight fans believe that’s exactly what will happen: McGregor will press hard and may even surprise Mayweather the first round or two—then Floyd will figure him out, adjust, and dominate. Others say that’s not good enough. Chael Sonnen says that Mayweather needs to make quick work of McGregor or it will be a stain on boxing. If a guy who’s never fought a professional boxing match can stand toe-to-toe with an undefeated champion for even two rounds, says Sonnen, it’s a disaster for boxing.
He’s got a point—if a ski-jumping champion, for instance, challenged a slalom racer who dominated the sport and beat him in his own discipline, it wouldn’t reflect well on slalom racing. Or, if an NFL place-kicker who hadn’t played soccer since 8th grade led the Premier League in scoring, etc.
Teddy Atlas believes that boxing can’t win. If Mayweather beats McGregor, he was supposed to, and if he doesn’t, well, forget about it. David Diamante sees one upside, if Mayweather wins, “Hopefully people will say this guy, McGregor’s at the top of Mixed Martial Arts and this boxing guy dispatched of him so easily, wow maybe there’s something to this boxing thing and maybe they’ll try to get into it more and take a look.”
The catch, which Mayweather is surely aware of, is that the fight’s priced on Showtime for $100. If he dispatches of McGregor too easily, lots of fans will feel ripped off. If the fight lasts the full 12 rounds and there’s not enough action, fans will say it was the same as the much-hyped Pacquiao fight and will feel ripped off. McGregor guarantees he’ll stop Mayweather in the fourth round. Floyd concurs with part of that assessment—it won’t go the distance, he says, but not in McGregor’s favor.
