The UFC has announced it will refund fans who were unable to watch Conor McGregor’s fight with Floyd Mayweather Jr. on Saturday due to technical difficulties.
UFC President Dana White released a statement explaining the decision:
Mayweather won …
The UFC has announced it will refund fans who were unable to watch Conor McGregor’s fight with Floyd Mayweather Jr. on Saturday due to technical difficulties.
UFC President Dana White released a statement explaining the decision:
Mayweather won the bout, which was shown on Showtime, with a 10th-round technical knockout.
This article will be updated to provide more information on this story as it becomes available.
Get the best sports content from the web and social in the new B/R app. Get the app and get the game.
Conor McGregor will be unable to fight for at least 60 days after the Nevada Athletic Commission announced its medical suspension for the reigning UFC lightweight champion Monday, according to MMA Fighting.
McGregor lost to Floyd Mayweather Jr. on Satu…
Conor McGregor will be unable to fight for at least 60 days after the Nevada Athletic Commission announced its medical suspension for the reigning UFC lightweight champion Monday, according to MMA Fighting.
McGregor lost to Floyd Mayweather Jr. on Saturday at Las Vegas’ T-Mobile Arena in his first professional boxing fight. Mayweather won by technical knockout in the 10th round.
Even in defeat, McGregor impressed many fans who had written off his chances of winning. Some even pondered whether McGregor would step back in the ring again.
“I was actually very surprised with his ability to do certain things,” Mayweather Promotions CEO Leonard Ellerbe said, per MMAJunkie’s Fernanda Prates and John Morgan. “If he chooses to, he definitely has a future in boxing—if he chooses to. To be able to last as long as he did, he’s a very tough competitor. He has a big heart and, again, he’s showed a lot.”
UFC President Dana White, however, was less enthused with the idea of McGregor’s pursuing a boxing career.
“I would rather he did not,” White said, per theIndependent‘sLuke Brown. … “This isn’t what he does. He’s a mixed martial artist, he’s better when he uses all of his weapons. I think he did great tonight but I want to see him back in the UFC.”
White will almost certainly want to get McGregor back in the Octagon as soon as possible. With Jon Jones’positive drug test, the UFC could be without one of its biggest stars for a multiple years, exacerbating what is a general problem of building the profiles of fighters under its banner.
Take McGregor out of the equation and the company would lose its most bankable name as well. Four of UFC’s five biggest pay-per-view buyrates came with McGregor in the main event, according toTapology.
You’re never going to beat the bully if you just hand over your lunch money.
Boxing is the bully. And MMA, for all its brutal skill and strength and toughness and posture—and the head tattoos, it’s critical I remember those—is the victim. B…
You’re never going to beat the bully if you just hand over your lunch money.
Boxing is the bully. And MMA, for all its brutal skill and strength and toughness and posture—and the head tattoos, it’s critical I remember those—is the victim. But enough! It’s time for MMA to do the toilet head-flushing, even on the back of a defeat.
Most of boxing’s competitors and pundits were hurting each other in a desperate scramble to mount the high horse after Floyd Mayweather Jr.’s 10th-round TKO of UFC champ Conor McGregor on Saturday. The bout went largely to expectations: McGregor was the aggressor early and tired down the stretch, when Mayweather made his move and had his way.
The boxing media was delighted, feeling vindicated against the brash upstart embodied by McGregor.
Eamon Lynch of Newsweek declared that “by the eighth round, the most feared man in the UFC was scuffling with all the ferocity and accuracy of a middle manager arguing with a colleague at after-work cocktails.”
There was a backhanded compliment from Michael Rosenthal of The Ring: “I thought it would be easier for this generation’s greatest boxer but ultimately he executed an intelligent game plan with only a few minor hitches, which resulted in a beatdown. I don’t think anyone would argue otherwise.”
“Holy moly, Conor McGregor is a fucking stiff. An amateur fighter with the very least willingness to take some actual chances could have knocked him over with a sneeze by the third round. Off the top of my head, he is the single most incompetent puncher I’ve ever seen in a PPV boxing promotion in my whole life, and his punching wasn’t even the worst of it.”
Even the venerableNew York Timesseemed to get into the race, breathlessly declaring McGregor’s face bloodied by Mayweather when no such thing happened (it subsequently corrected the article):
It wasn’t all haughty or mean-spirited, but a lot of it was. And as fun as that stuff is to write and read, it looks right past the finger on the scale. This was essentially an exhibition match—big-money, sure, but an exhibition nonetheless. So you can judge that on its own merits, as well as the ridiculous spectacle it all created. You can evaluate Mayweather’s ability to take and win a fight against someone with no experience akin to his.
But you can’t say boxing “beat” MMA, or even an MMA fighter, or shuck off the MMA fighter’s pro boxing abilities. It will never be apples to apples, even more so because no boxer this side of open homelessness will ever step into an MMA cage, where they’d be churned into hamburger.
They tried, though. And in trying they ignored some facts. The fact is, McGregor did better than his critics suggested. He had strong jabs early and did some good countering, even slipping a punch or two in a way that evoked Mayweather himself. McGregor ultimately landed more punches (111) than Manny Pacquiao (81) and only seven fewer than Canelo Alvarez (118). That’s not the work of a stiff, is it?
See? It’s just something fun to say. But the fun ignores the uneven athletic playing field at work. By extension, that downgrades MMA athletes and the high level at which those professionals practice their own trade. Many MMA fighters were proud of McGregor Saturday because of the way he handled himself, even if he is brash and crazy and not as good of a boxer as the best boxer of his generation.
Unfortunately, that’s not the norm in the MMA community. People act like George McFly: “Oh, boxing, you got us again! Boy, I hope I can come back to your house someday and let you give me that atomic wedgie you wanted. I’m sorry again that my undies weren’t stretchy enough.”
MMA people just aren’t proud of their own, at least not as often as those in other sports, when it comes to outsiders or rivals, in this case boxing. It’s not “cool” to stand up and defend the sport. Maybe it’s the dysfunctional manner in which the UFC is run. Maybe it’s the shocking lack of money the athletes receive, particularly in relation to boxing.
Maybe it’s because of its exploding popularity—it’s not so underground anymore that fans feel that they’re plugged into something special, but not big enough so that its TV ratings outpace the average PGA tournament. Or maybe it’s just because they’re tired of watching people look askance and crinkle up their noses.
We’ll never actually know whether MMA is better than boxing. But boxing can do a better job of not being threatened by MMA, and MMA can do a better job of standing its ground in this debate, particularly at times like this when it becomes national. That was well spelled-out by MMA Fighting writer Mike Chiappetta today on Twitter.
There is room for both. But fans of boxing—the old sport, the sweet science—now with more cache than MMA, seems unlikely to cede any ground. Maybe MMA fans just have to get out of the tattoo chair and take some.
It’s become the Zapruder film of the combat sports crowd.
And depending on which side of the Floyd Mayweather Jr./Conor McGregor debate you find yourself, chances are your impressions of their Saturday night fight’s climax are a bit different.
Those ru…
It’s become the Zapruder film of the combat sports crowd.
And depending on which side of the Floyd Mayweather Jr./Conor McGregor debate you find yourself, chances are your impressions of their Saturday night fight’s climax are a bit different.
Those running with The Money Team watch the final 65 seconds at T-Mobile Arena and see their man battering a helpless McGregor across the ring until referee Robert Byrd rescues the bratty Irishman.
Meanwhile, those aligned with Team Notorious insist their guy was merely reeling from fatigue, still in full possession of his senses and in no way near a state that warranted a fight-ending intervention.
Truth told, the answer may be somewhere in between.
But it’s closer to one side than the other.
A clinical review of the fight’s final stages indeed reveals McGregor looking exhausted in the corner before the arrival of the 10th, and barely acknowledging his trainer’s exhortations.
He gamely began the round by flicking punches as Mayweather trudged forward, but was unable to either back his man up or tie him up and soon found himself vulnerable in a corner.
It was there where he took the first in a series of chopping right hands, about 45 seconds into the round, that drew gasps from the broadcast team on Showtime and sent him reeling along the ropes.
A second right buckled his knees and drew another failed attempt at a clinch, which resulted in yet another clean right and yet another awkward stumble backward.
A pouncing Mayweather initially missed with a quick series of looping shots, but connected soon after on an overhand left that prompted a non-replying McGregor to lurch forward along the middle strand, where he took one final flush left before Byrd leapt in at 1:05.
From end to end, the decisive sequence took just 20 seconds, during which Mayweather threw about 17 punches and cleanly landed six, while McGregor offered only one, a missed right uppercut, in return.
So, statistically speaking, it hardly qualifies as an evisceration.
And if your contention is that a knockdown would have been a more satisfying end, you’re correct.
But when you consider optics alongside numbers, it’s easier to see why Byrd pulled the plug.
Though McGregor maintained afterward that he’d been more tired than buzzed, his unstable legs and lack of return fire made him look the part of a beaten man.
And as he bent forward under Mayweather’s final barrage with hands down and head exposed, it wasn’t the referee’s job to gauge the reasons for the position—or to wait for a flatlining EEG to validate it. His job was to protect a fighter who was no longer providing any competitive resistance.
Unlike with a baseball manager, where failing to remove a spent pitcher might result in a spiked earned run average, a referee allowing too many unfettered blows to a spent fighter hoping to “wobble back” to his corner is risking far more dire consequences.
In that light, McGregor’s suggestion that he deserved more time falls flat.
“The stoppage was spot-on, nothing wrong with it,” said Randy Gordon, former chairman of the New York State Athletic Commission and current SiriusXM radio host.
“I really believe had that been Mayweather instead of McGregor, Byrd would have done the same thing. I have no problem with the stoppage.”
Additionally, while there’s no consensus playbook for how fighters should act if they feel a referee ended matters too soon, there was precisely zero demonstrable debate from either McGregor or his corner as Byrd made his call.
In fact, it wasn’t until several minutes later, during a mid-ring debriefing with Showtime’s Jim Gray, that the beaten man indicated even the slightest issue with the closing scene.
Byrd’s decision counts for something more than marketing.
A point with which Mauro Ranallo, the Showtime blow-by-blow man who built his brand behind an MMA mic, agreed on air.
“I think the referee did the job that he was assigned to do,” he said, “protect McGregor.”
Unless otherwise noted, all quotes were obtained firsthand.
It’s become the Zapruder film of the combat sports crowd.
And depending on which side of the Floyd Mayweather Jr./Conor McGregor debate you find yourself, chances are your impressions of their Saturday night fight’s climax are a bit different.
Those ru…
It’s become the Zapruder film of the combat sports crowd.
And depending on which side of the Floyd Mayweather Jr./Conor McGregor debate you find yourself, chances are your impressions of their Saturday night fight’s climax are a bit different.
Those running with The Money Team watch the final 65 seconds at T-Mobile Arena and see their man battering a helpless McGregor across the ring until referee Robert Byrd rescues the bratty Irishman.
Meanwhile, those aligned with Team Notorious insist their guy was merely reeling from fatigue, still in full possession of his senses and in no way near a state that warranted a fight-ending intervention.
Truth told, the answer may be somewhere in between.
But it’s closer to one side than the other.
A clinical review of the fight’s final stages indeed reveals McGregor looking exhausted in the corner before the arrival of the 10th, and barely acknowledging his trainer’s exhortations.
He gamely began the round by flicking punches as Mayweather trudged forward, but was unable to either back his man up or tie him up and soon found himself vulnerable in a corner.
It was there where he took the first in a series of chopping right hands, about 45 seconds into the round, that drew gasps from the broadcast team on Showtime and sent him reeling along the ropes.
A second right buckled his knees and drew another failed attempt at a clinch, which resulted in yet another clean right and yet another awkward stumble backward.
A pouncing Mayweather initially missed with a quick series of looping shots, but connected soon after on an overhand left that prompted a non-replying McGregor to lurch forward along the middle strand, where he took one final flush left before Byrd leapt in at 1:05.
From end to end, the decisive sequence took just 20 seconds, during which Mayweather threw about 17 punches and cleanly landed six, while McGregor offered only one, a missed right uppercut, in return.
So, statistically speaking, it hardly qualifies as an evisceration.
And if your contention is that a knockdown would have been a more satisfying end, you’re correct.
But when you consider optics alongside numbers, it’s easier to see why Byrd pulled the plug.
Though McGregor maintained afterward that he’d been more tired than buzzed, his unstable legs and lack of return fire made him look the part of a beaten man.
And as he bent forward under Mayweather’s final barrage with hands down and head exposed, it wasn’t the referee’s job to gauge the reasons for the position—or to wait for a flatlining EEG to validate it. His job was to protect a fighter who was no longer providing any competitive resistance.
Unlike with a baseball manager, where failing to remove a spent pitcher might result in a spiked earned run average, a referee allowing too many unfettered blows to a spent fighter hoping to “wobble back” to his corner is risking far more dire consequences.
In that light, McGregor’s suggestion that he deserved more time falls flat.
“The stoppage was spot-on, nothing wrong with it,” said Randy Gordon, former chairman of the New York State Athletic Commission and current SiriusXM radio host.
“I really believe had that been Mayweather instead of McGregor, Byrd would have done the same thing. I have no problem with the stoppage.”
Additionally, while there’s no consensus playbook for how fighters should act if they feel a referee ended matters too soon, there was precisely zero demonstrable debate from either McGregor or his corner as Byrd made his call.
In fact, it wasn’t until several minutes later, during a mid-ring debriefing with Showtime’s Jim Gray, that the beaten man indicated even the slightest issue with the closing scene.
Byrd’s decision counts for something more than marketing.
A point with which Mauro Ranallo, the Showtime blow-by-blow man who built his brand behind an MMA mic, agreed on air.
“I think the referee did the job that he was assigned to do,” he said, “protect McGregor.”
Unless otherwise noted, all quotes were obtained firsthand.
Oscar De La Hoya was openly critical of Floyd Mayweather Jr.’s decision to face off with Conor McGregor on Saturday, and the Golden Boy Promotions CEO offered his two cents after Mayweather earned a 10th-round TKO victory over McGregor in Las Vegas.&nb…
Oscar De La Hoya was openly critical of Floyd Mayweather Jr.’s decision to face off with Conor McGregor on Saturday, and the Golden Boy Promotions CEO offered his two cents after Mayweather earned a 10th-round TKO victory over McGregor in Las Vegas.
De La Hoya told reporters Monday he didn’t watch the fight and said Canelo Alvarez, who fights under the Golden Boy banner, would’ve knocked McGregor out inside of one round, per ESPN.com’s Arash Markazi:
During an interview onThe MMA Hourwith Ariel Helwani (h/t MMA Fighting’sMarc Raimondi), De La Hoya said he thought Mayweather had allowed McGregor to stay in the fight and win a few rounds early on.
“Because Mayweather let him. The first four of five rounds, he let him do that,” he said. “The punches are coming from different angles. It was a bit awkward to watch, actually.”
While many were impressed with McGregor’s ability to hold his own against one of the greatest boxers of his generation, it’s not as if Mayweather is in the prime of his career. He turned 40 in February and hadn’t fought in nearly two years when he stepped in the ring Saturday.
Yahoo Sports’ Chris Mannix thought McGregor would have a much harder time against younger fighters:
Regardless of De La Hoya’s opinion, Mayweather and McGregor will both be laughing all the way to the bank when they receive their full share of the revenues from the fight.
ESPN.com’sDan Rafaelreported Mayweather and McGregor are guaranteed to earn at least $100 million and $30 million, respectively. Mayweather’s purse could climb to higher than $200 million, while McGregor could make upwards of nine figures when all is said and done.
The UFC has announced it will refund fans who were unable to watch Conor McGregor’s fight with Floyd Mayweather Jr. on Saturday due to technical difficulties.