Floyd Mayweather’s former opponent discusses Conor McGregor’s chances in the boxing ring.
Floyd Mayweather’s last fight was in 2015 against Andre Berto. While the two-time welterweight champion has performed well against numerous other top boxers, he couldn’t really touch Mayweather and ended losing a pretty lopsided affair.
Now that Conor McGregor is preparing to try and accomplish a feat that 49 other boxers couldn’t, Berto spoke about the UFC champion’s chances on the “big circus coming up.”
“All of us tried to catch him. We couldn’t catch him. We’ll see if McGregor can make it happen,” Berto told Fight Hub. “But it’s the boxing game and anything can happen. If Conor can land a crazy shot, and if he does that, he’s the president of the world! Nobody is going to tell him shit. Nothing.”
Berto says he’s “good friends” with McGregor and got to know him well after they spent several months together in the past to rehab injuries.
“I talked to him the other day,” Berto said. “He’s focused and ready to try to do what he does. Regardless, he is in a no-lose situation. He’s going to make $100 million and everyone expects him to lose anyway. Then he’s going to leave and go right back to MMA and take that shit over and be a bigger star than he was before.
“I think he’s going to build credibility and transcend as he goes over to the UFC,” he explained. “I know a lot of big UFC guys, and those guys, they don’t really get paid like us (boxers) at all. Conor is one of the first ones getting these 20 millions, 30 millions, and now 100 million. He’s the first guy they ever had like that, so probably going to transcend it.”
While Berto thinks McGregor is in a win-win situation, he believes that Mayweather has to completely dominate for him to receive any credibility for fighting a 0-0 boxer.
“For people in general to even accept it in some way — because they’re going to tune in regardless — Mayweather has to embarrass him, boxing-wise to get even a little bit of credibility from the boxing world.”
Berto has a point, but at the end of the day, I’m not sure Mayweather cares more about credibility than the amount of zeroes in his paycheck.
It is also worth noting that current betting odds on this fight have Berto, Cotto, and Maidana as much bigger underdogs than the UFC fighter with a 0-0 boxing record.