Conor McGregor Addresses Floyd Mayweather’s Potential Future In MMA

UFC lightweight champion Conor McGregor may have lost to Floyd Mayweather by tenth-round TKO in their massive boxing match last Saturday night (August 26, 2017) from the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, Nev., but the vast majority of the combat sports world agrees that Mayweather would lose quite handily if the two were to reverse venues and compete in McGregor’s UFC octagon.

While Mayweather may be one of the best boxers ever, he’s been able to focus his entire career on the minute of boxing in terms of footwork, angles, and timing, among other things, and obviously has had no requirement of training any sort of wrestling and grappling. That would suggest McGregor would be able to take him down and submit him within in the first minute, even if “The Notorious” is mostly known for his striking as well.

But McGregor himself doesn’t necessarily believe that would be the case, posting a long post on his official Instagram that addressed Mayweather’s rep as a fighter and his future prospects in MMA:

“He is a heck of a boxer. His experience, his patience and his endurance won him this fight hands down. I always told him he was not a fighter but a boxer. But sharing the ring with him he is certainly a solid fighter. Strong in the clinch. Great understanding of frames and head position. He has some very strong tools he could bring into an MMA game for sure.”

So McGregor has his praise for Mayweather, a far cry from the bad blood displayed (or manufactured) during their racism and homophobia-laden world press conference tour last month. It’s no surprise, as McGregor showed the same reserved mood in the moments and days following his somewhat shocking submission loss Nate Diaz at UFC 196.

That’s part of his ability to stay gracious in defeat, which he did by rematching and defeating Diaz in 2016’s most anticipated UFC bout. He could be headed for the foregone conclusion that is his trilogy match with Diaz very soon – if the UFC is willing to meet Diaz’ lofty pay demands, that is.

But he could also be sowing the seeds for a rematch with Mayweather, this time in the octagon.

You can read his full post here:

Just coming back around after a whirlwind couple of days. Thank you to all the fans for the support of the fight and the event! Without your support we as fighters are nothing so I thank you all! Thank you to my team of coaches and training partners! I had an amazing team and It truly was an amazing and enjoyable camp, and honestly I feel with just a little change in certain areas of the prep, we could have built the engine for 12 full rounds under stress, and got the better result on the night. Getting to 12 rounds alone in practice was always the challenge in this camp. We started slowly getting to the 12 and decreasing the stress in the rounds the closer it got to 12. I think for the time we had, 10 weeks in camp, it had to be done this way. If I began with a loaded 12 rounds under much stress I would have only hit a brick wall and lost progress as a result and potentially not made the fight. A little more time and we could have made the 12 cleanly, while under more stress, and made it thru the later rounds in the actual fight. I feel every decision we made at each given time was the correct decision, and I am proud of everyone of my team for what we done in the short time that we done it. 30 minutes was the longest I have fought in a ring or cage or anywhere. Surpassing my previous time of 25 minutes. I am happy for the experience and happy to take all these great lessons with me and implement them into my camp going forward. Another day another lesson! Congrats to Floyd on a well fought match. Very experienced and methodical in his work. I wish him well in retirement. He is a heck of a boxer. His experience, his patience and his endurance won him this fight hands down. I always told him he was not a fighter but a boxer. But sharing the ring with him he is certainly a solid fighter. Strong in the clinch. Great understanding of frames and head position. He has some very strong tools he could bring into an MMA game for sure. Here is a toast of whiskey to everyone involved in this event and everyone who enjoyed it! Thank you to you all! Onto the next one!

A post shared by Conor McGregor Official (@thenotoriousmma) on Aug 31, 2017 at 1:21am PDT

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