Floyd Mayweather Jr. is nothing if not a master of manipulation in the ring. He reminded spectators at T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas and millions of viewers at home of his pugilistic puppeteering during his 10th-round technical knockout of UFC star and boxing novice Conor McGregor Saturday night.
“Our game plan was to take our time, go to him, let him shoot his shots early and then take him out down the stretch,” Mayweather said after his latest win, per ESPN.com’s Arash Markazi. “We know in MMA he fights for 25 minutes. After 25 minutes, he started to slow down. I guaranteed to everybody that this wouldn’t go the distance.”
Mayweather once again played it cool and methodical against an aggressive opponent en route to his 50th win in as many fights. McGregor was the aggressor from the get-go. He outpunched Mayweather through the first four rounds, 41-28. The early disparity between the two was even more apparent in total punches thrown, 180-59 in McGregor‘s favor.
Percentage-wise, though, Mayweather was much more efficient with his punches, landing 47.5 percent of his to 22.8 percent for McGregor. That economy of attack—along with plenty of time spent with his back turned to McGregor—allowed Mayweather to weather the storm while preserving his energy. By the end of the sixth round, McGregor was already visibly tired while Mayweather had barely broken a sweat.
With his wind intact, Mayweather went on to dominate McGregor from the fifth round until the 1:05 mark of the 10th. Over that span, the former landed (142) and attempted (261) far more total punches than McGregor did (69/250) and at more than twice the accuracy (54.4 percent to McGregor‘s 27.6 percent).
“Our game plan was to go straight ahead,” Mayweather said, per Markazi. “I said numerous times that I wouldn’t back down and that’s what I did.”
Round by round, Mayweather wore McGregor down, absorbing some of the MMA star’s swings but dodging most, until the newcomer was toast. Mayweather came at him hard in the ninth round and even harder in the 10th before referee Robert Byrd stepped in to stop the fight with just over a minute left in the round. Mayweather hadn’t yet knocked McGregor to the mat, but the 29-year-old Irishman went more than a minute without returning a punch, prompting Byrd to award Floyd the TKO—his first since beating Ricky Hatton in December 2007.
As McGregor said during his post-fight interview, per Markazi: “I thought it was close, though, and I thought it was a little early on the stoppage. I get a little wobbly when I’m tired. But get me in the corner and I’ll recover and I’ll come back. There’s a lot on the line here—he should have let me keep going until I hit the floor. I was just a little fatigued.”
Even if the fight had gone the distance, McGregor wouldn’t have won on the judges’ scorecards. Each of the three had Mayweather well ahead through the first nine rounds.
McGregor earned praise for putting up as much of a fight as he did against Mayweather.
He was a more accurate combatant than some of Mayweather’s more recent conquests…
…and even shattered Las Vegas’ expectations in at least one regard:
Still, just about everything went according to plan for Mayweather. He sized up McGregor early, bided his time through the middle rounds and toyed with the boxing debutant down the stretch. If there’s any surprise here, it’s that Mayweather didn’t finish him off earlier.
Then again, for a 40-year-old who hadn’t set foot in the ring in nearly two years, it’s hard to blame Mayweather for needing a little more time to find his groove again. After the fight, he made it abundantly clear that he would now return to retirement—and that the third one would stick.
“This was my last fight tonight,” he said, per Markazi. “For sure.”
That, too, went according to plan for Mayweather, whose massive payday has him poised to become just the third athlete ever to break $1 billion in career earnings.
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