Paulie Malignaggi gives his own pre-fight assessment on the upcoming UFC lightweight title bout between Khabib Nurmagomedov and Conor McGregor
There is no love lost between Conor McGregor and Paulie Malignaggi. The two men recently went at it on social media after McGregor put up a photo of him knocking down Maliganggi during a sparring session in preparation for the Floyd Mayweather boxing match in August 2017.
“Magic Man” was a recent guest on SiriusXM Boxing this week, where he went on to respond further to “The Notorious.”
“I feel bad. I hurt his pride, I hurt him as a man,” Malignaggi said (transcript via MMA Fighting). Sure, he gets his feelings up and his hopes up when all his p-ssy fans get his back on social media and believe his four seconds of highlights, that gets his hopes up.”
“He needs a pick-me-up so he’ll post a Tweet every once in a while about me just to give himself a little pick-me-up just so his fans can tell him, ‘Yeah, Conor! You’re the man!’ But when he lays his head on the bed deep at night, he knows he’s one of combat sports’ biggest p-ssies and that’s the problem. He knows who he is inside.”
Malignaggi also gave his own assessment on McGregor’s upcoming title fight against Khabib Nurmagomedov. In a nutshell, he echoed the statements made by many, based on Khabib’s ground-and-pound skills.
“Now, Khabib is not a guy that’s known as a submission guy,” Malignaggi said. “Now, I’m not a mixed martial arts expert, but Khabib is more of a ground-and-pound guy, which means you don’t have the option to be submitted really because Khabib will just keep you on the ground and punish you and beat you and beat you and beat you.”
“Now, granted, Conor has some skills standing up a little bit and maybe Khabib will have a hard time getting it to the ground, but if the fight ends up on the ground, it’s only a beating for Conor. So how is a guy with no balls gonna take a good beating for five rounds when he looks to quit as soon as he gets uncomfortable? That’s the question of the day really.”
At the same time, he foresees a similar scenario as McGregor’s UFC 202 rematch against Nate Diaz in 2016.
“The fact is he’s gonna look for a way out of that fight too,” Malignaggi said of McGregor. “Look at round five of the Diaz rematch, he’s literally running for his life. Who does that? With the fight hanging in the balance, who runs for the entire final round? He was given the decision in a close decision that could have went either way but who takes that chance though?”
“These are all character flaws of a man with no balls. When you’re a fighter you can tell right away who has character and who doesn’t. The guy has none so he tries to play it up in other ways so he covers up the fact that he has no balls.”
McGregor and Khabib will headline UFC 229 on October 6th in Las Vegas.