Floyd Mayweather Jr. vanquished Conor McGregor on Saturday night in the 10th round of a fight that somehow managed to exceed even the loftiest (and some say biased) expectations despite featuring one of the best boxers of all time and a newbi…
Floyd Mayweather Jr. vanquished Conor McGregor on Saturday night in the 10th round of a fight thatsomehowmanaged to exceed even the loftiest (and some say biased) expectations despite featuring one of the best boxers of all time and a newbie to the sport.
Whatever else you may think of it, the bout was a beautiful spectacle and full of the drama fans demand in a game where you’re always one punch from the end.
Mayweather, now 50-0, vowed to retire following the fight, perLance Pugmireof theLos Angeles Times, comments he doubled down on once the dust settled at the T-Mobile Arena.
But should he? And will he?
Or will the allure of hundreds of millions of dollars draw him back once again?
Let’s look at his five best options, including a couple of potential enticing matchups.
When a fight comes to a close, it doesn’t take long to ask the inevitable question: what’s next?
Floyd Mayweather Jr. is 50-0 and is headed back into retirement, but Conor McGregor is still in his prime as the UFC lightweight champion. However, his per…
When a fight comes to a close, it doesn’t take long to ask the inevitable question: what’s next?
Floyd Mayweather Jr. is 50-0 and is headed back into retirement, but ConorMcGregor is still in his prime as the UFC lightweight champion. However, his performance against Mayweather—a competitive 10th-round TKO loss Saturday night in Las Vegas—leaves options open in the boxing realm.
Steven Rondina, what should McGregor do for his next bout with the “Money Fight” now behind us?
First, here’s what MMAFighting.com’s Ariel Helwani noted:
Steven:McGregor will have been out of UFC competition for over a year by the time he returns to the Octagon.
On the one hand, that’s bad due to the noticeable dip in UFC pay-per-view sales and the glut of contenders in the lightweight and featherweight divisions. On the other hand, it’s great because there are so many prospective opponents for him.
If I’m in charge, I’m throwing McGregor a softball for his return. While he may have lost to Mayweather, the response to his performance has been resoundingly positive. There will be a lot of curious newcomers watching when McGregor next enters the cage, and it would be silly to put him in a position to lose.
Jeremy Stephens is a perfect opponent. The storyline of looking to get revenge for McGregor‘s epic diss (link NSFW) last year is easy to sell. While some MMA fans might harrumph about the matchup, it would soar over one million buys and would end with an impressive victory for McGregor.
Unfortunately for the entire combat sports world, I’m not in charge of the UFC. Sean Shelby and Dana White are, and they’re nothing if not shortsighted with their talent.
They’ll put together the biggest fight possible, no matter the risk involved. And the biggest fight possible is a rubber match with Nate Diaz.
Nathan: That’s the fight to make.
Any return fight for McGregor will do over a million buys, which has become the benchmark for UFC success. That’s the strength of McGregor‘s name. Still, it’s about making the biggest fight possible.
Diaz is that fight, as ESPN’s Pat Muldowney and MMAjunkie’s ChamatkarSandhu tweeted:
Their rematch did 1.65 million buys (h/t MMA Payout), and following McGregor‘s boxing spectacle with Floyd, it will do no less than two million. No other fight touches that mark.
McGregor talks about money and paydays for a reason. That’s where his interest lies. The only other fight that would net him equal, if not more, dead presidents is a boxing tilt against Paulie Malignaggi, but it’s not a fight the combat sports world is clamoring for at the moment.
Steven:The McGregor vs. Malignaggi beef started out interesting but lost steam quickly. That said, if McGregor‘s next fight takes place in a ring (or if Malignaggi is willing to get into the cage), that’s the one to make.
While the discussion of training-partner etiquette is lost on most combat sports fans, this is still a bona fide grudge match in a way few fights are. Looking to get revenge against McGregor in the ring is a pay-per-view slam dunk, and so is turning the tables by facing a boxer in the cage.
Don’t get me wrong: I want to see McGregor vs. Diaz III. Their rivalry is one of the greatest in MMA history, and I could see that fight blowing away the UFC PPVbuyrate record. But the reward isn’t worth the risk.
Of course, McGregor has plenty of suitors past Diaz and Malignaggi. Georges St-Pierre, TyronWoodley, Max Holloway, Tony Ferguson, Kevin Lee and KhabibNurmagomedov all make sense. Do any of those tickle your fancy more than the rubber match?
Nathan: No.
I don’t want to see McGregor even attempt to cut back to featherweight, and any lightweight or welterweight foe not named Nate Diaz doesn’t interest me at this juncture.
The Malignaggi fight doesn’t attract me in the slightest, but considering the economics of a non-MMA bout makes it a possibility. It’s not a stretch to imagine Zuffa with its boxing platform in association with McGregor Sports and Entertainment for that fight.
What should come next is simple. Any other opponent besides Diaz, and I’m buying the event simply to watch McGregor. No one else adds value. Diaz adds value and intrigue. That’s the fight to make.
Floyd Mayweather ended his storied boxing career by knocking out the most feared MMA fighter on the planet. After defeating Conor McGregor on Saturday night in Las Vegas at the T-Mobile Arena, Mayweather rode off into the sunset holding the most pristi…
Floyd Mayweather ended his storied boxing career by knocking out the most feared MMA fighter on the planet. After defeating Conor McGregor on Saturday night in Las Vegas at the T-Mobile Arena, Mayweather rode off into the sunset holding the most pristine record in all of boxing history.
50-0.
It is no small feat in such a rough and tough sport, and it’s one that will likely go unmatched for decades—the same way former heavyweight champion Rocky Marciano’s 49-0 mark stood from 1955 until Mayweather’s win over McGregor. Whatever you think about the man outside of the ring, Mayweather, a fighter who was lineal champion in four different weight classes, has set boxing’s new benchmark of perfection.
Yet many in the boxing media seldom praise Mayweather’s legacy as a fighter. While pundits will begrudgingly tip their hats to him as the best of his time, Mayweather is often roasted in the peanut gallery as a cautionary tale rather than an example for young fighters to follow.
Sport’s Illustrated’s Chris Mannix summed the totality of such views before Mayweather’s last so-called retirement fight—a 12-round decision against Andre Berto in 2015:
“Mayweather could have been a legend, could have been, as he loves to say he is already, the best ever. If he fought the fights that were out there—if he had engaged Manny Pacquiao in a trilogy, if he had taken on Miguel Cotto earlier in his career, if he had picked apart Paul Williams, if he had challenged Tim Bradley—his resume would have be bulletproof. Instead, we spend too much time, waste too many column inches on the fights Mayweather didn’t fight, of his baseless defenses of opponents everyone knew were not worthy.”
Mayweather’s defeat of McGregor has probably done little to sway those with such a strong opinion on his resume. While McGregor is as feared a striker as exists in MMA, the reality of the situation is that he had competed in exactly zero professional boxing matches prior to facing Mayweather.
Other than knocking McGregor out, which Mayweather did by the way, there was really nothing more for him to do to stem the tide of such heavy criticism.
But in his last fight ever, Mayweather gave the public exactly what it wanted: the world’s best boxer versus the world’s best MMA fighter. The bout against McGregor was almost exclusively made to send Mayweather to retirement in style. Ever since McGregor began hemming and hawing about wanting to box him after Mayweather’s win over Berto nearly two years ago, the sports media world devoted it’s full attention to getting the fight made.
Mayweather made it. And once the bell rang on fight night, McGregor’s spirited effort helped Mayweather finalize his career in a spectacular way. He scored a sensational knockout against a household name and made millions of dollars doing it. There is no fighter in the history of boxing who could have finished his career in such a fitting manner.
Even if Mayweather’s last fight wasn’t his toughest test, his resume is littered with the names of men who were deemed at the time to be excellent competition. Jose Luis Castillo. Diego Corrales. Arturo Gatti. Oscar De La Hoya. Zab Judah. Shane Mosley. Miguel Cotto. Canelo Alvarez. Manny Pacquiao.
How many future Hall of Fame fighters are on that list? And how many great fighters must the greatest fighter of an era defeat to be worthy of praise?
Marciano, the only heavyweight to retire both champion and undefeated (and stay that way), did not suffer the same fate as Mayweather once he left boxing. He was lauded as an all-time great fighter the moment he left the ring and is still considered one of the greatest boxing champions ever.
What’s right praise for Marciano should be right praise for Mayweather, too.
If you think Pacquiao looked past his prime against Mayweather in 2015, you should have seen how old Joe Louis looked when he got knocked out by Marciano in 1951. And after he won the heavyweight crown the next year against Jersey Joe Walcott, Marciano only defended it six times before he retired, albeit against stalwart boxing legends such as Walcott, Ezzard Charles and Archie Moore. Mayweather, on the other hand, has defended his world title belts 21 different occasions.
Still, isn’t Mayweather’s resume at least equal or better in quantity and quality as the revered Marciano’s?
Perhaps it’s his persona that’s off-putting. Yahoo.com’s Kevin Iole detailed Mayweather’s rapid ascension as a household name starting with his 2007 bout against De La Hoya:
“When HBO created the preview series “24/7” to promote his May 5, 2007, bout with Oscar De La Hoya, Mayweather saw it as an opportunity.
“He portrayed himself as an over-the-top, ostentatious character who knew no bounds. He changed his nickname from “Pretty Boy” Floyd to “Money May,” and he’d boast incessantly about his wealth and what it did for him.
“It was a clever way to attract mainstream attention and expand beyond the comparatively small boxing audience.
“He became a celebrity much the way Paris Hilton and Kim Kardashian became celebrities. It wasn’t so much for any particular talent, because the mainstream doesn’t care much for boxing talent. It was because of the opulent lifestyle he portrayed.”
Mayweather is criticized for his extreme existentialism. He defines himself publicly by whatever external measures he pleases, most often aggrandizing things like materialism and wealth while minimizing certain aspects of competition. Perhaps Mayweather’s definition of greatness has more to do with how much money he can retire with in his bank account than how great the fighters were that he defeated, and because of that, the people in the sport shun him for uprooting their own sense of boxing’s more traditional values.
Or maybe none of that is true and Mayweather is simply a product of his time. Fighters today do not treat their careers the same way old-timers did. Where 70 years ago boxers engaged in bouts every month and ran up careers that spanned 200-plus fights, today once a fighter reaches a certain level it is assumed he will carefully choose just two or three fights a year at the most.
Should Mayweather be blamed for that, especially considering all we know today about the physical damage that occurs to a boxer’s brain and body?
Losses on a fighter’s resume in the previous era of the sport meant he had put in work against the toughest competition available and that he was a seasoned professional. Today, one or two losses can send even the top fighters to the brink of irrelevancy. Look no further than formerly undefeated light heavyweight Sergey Kovalev, who is reportedly considering retirement at the age of 34 after being defeated twice by the pound-for-pound best fighter in the sport, Andre Ward.
Regardless, it’s difficult to gauge how much of Mayweather’s legacy has been defined by those who criticize the wrong aspects of his overall work.
In the end, perhaps it is as simple as this: Mayweather was as great a fighter as his time period allowed. He captured 15 world titles in five different weight classes. He fought and defeated the single greatest rival to his claim as the era’s best in Pacquiao, and he did so decisively. And at 40 years old in the final fight of his legendary career, he put on a spectacular show against the most feared fighter in the world today, knocking him out in Round 10 of perhaps the biggest pay-per-view event in boxing history.
Floyd Mayweather ended his storied boxing career by knocking out the most feared MMA fighter on the planet. After defeating Conor McGregor on Saturday night in Las Vegas at the T-Mobile Arena, Mayweather rode off into the sunset holding the most pristi…
Floyd Mayweather ended his storied boxing career by knocking out the most feared MMA fighter on the planet. After defeating Conor McGregor on Saturday night in Las Vegas at the T-Mobile Arena, Mayweather rode off into the sunset holding the most pristine record in all of boxing history.
50-0.
It is no small feat in such a rough and tough sport, and it’s one that will likely go unmatched for decades—the same way former heavyweight champion Rocky Marciano’s 49-0 mark stood from 1955 until Mayweather’s win over McGregor. Whatever you think about the man outside of the ring, Mayweather, a fighter who was lineal champion in four different weight classes, has set boxing’s new benchmark of perfection.
Yet many in the boxing media seldom praise Mayweather’s legacy as a fighter. While pundits will begrudgingly tip their hats to him as the best of his time, Mayweather is often roasted in the peanut gallery as a cautionary tale rather than an example for young fighters to follow.
Sport’s Illustrated’s Chris Mannix summed the totality of such views before Mayweather’s last so-called retirement fight—a 12-round decision against Andre Berto in 2015:
“Mayweather could have been a legend, could have been, as he loves to say he is already, the best ever. If he fought the fights that were out there—if he had engaged Manny Pacquiao in a trilogy, if he had taken on Miguel Cotto earlier in his career, if he had picked apart Paul Williams, if he had challenged Tim Bradley—his resume would have be bulletproof. Instead, we spend too much time, waste too many column inches on the fights Mayweather didn’t fight, of his baseless defenses of opponents everyone knew were not worthy.”
Mayweather’s defeat of McGregor has probably done little to sway those with such a strong opinion on his resume. While McGregor is as feared a striker as exists in MMA, the reality of the situation is that he had competed in exactly zero professional boxing matches prior to facing Mayweather.
Other than knocking McGregor out, which Mayweather did by the way, there was really nothing more for him to do to stem the tide of such heavy criticism.
But in his last fight ever, Mayweather gave the public exactly what it wanted: the world’s best boxer versus the world’s best MMA fighter. The bout against McGregor was almost exclusively made to send Mayweather to retirement in style. Ever since McGregor began hemming and hawing about wanting to box him after Mayweather’s win over Berto nearly two years ago, the sports media world devoted it’s full attention to getting the fight made.
Mayweather made it. And once the bell rang on fight night, McGregor’s spirited effort helped Mayweather finalize his career in a spectacular way. He scored a sensational knockout against a household name and made millions of dollars doing it. There is no fighter in the history of boxing who could have finished his career in such a fitting manner.
Even if Mayweather’s last fight wasn’t his toughest test, his resume is littered with the names of men who were deemed at the time to be excellent competition. Jose Luis Castillo. Diego Corrales. Arturo Gatti. Oscar De La Hoya. Zab Judah. Shane Mosley. Miguel Cotto. Canelo Alvarez. Manny Pacquiao.
How many future Hall of Fame fighters are on that list? And how many great fighters must the greatest fighter of an era defeat to be worthy of praise?
Marciano, the only heavyweight to retire both champion and undefeated (and stay that way), did not suffer the same fate as Mayweather once he left boxing. He was lauded as an all-time great fighter the moment he left the ring and is still considered one of the greatest boxing champions ever.
What’s right praise for Marciano should be right praise for Mayweather, too.
If you think Pacquiao looked past his prime against Mayweather in 2015, you should have seen how old Joe Louis looked when he got knocked out by Marciano in 1951. And after he won the heavyweight crown the next year against Jersey Joe Walcott, Marciano only defended it six times before he retired, albeit against stalwart boxing legends such as Walcott, Ezzard Charles and Archie Moore. Mayweather, on the other hand, has defended his world title belts 21 different occasions.
Still, isn’t Mayweather’s resume at least equal or better in quantity and quality as the revered Marciano’s?
Perhaps it’s his persona that’s off-putting. Yahoo.com’s Kevin Iole detailed Mayweather’s rapid ascension as a household name starting with his 2007 bout against De La Hoya:
“When HBO created the preview series “24/7” to promote his May 5, 2007, bout with Oscar De La Hoya, Mayweather saw it as an opportunity.
“He portrayed himself as an over-the-top, ostentatious character who knew no bounds. He changed his nickname from “Pretty Boy” Floyd to “Money May,” and he’d boast incessantly about his wealth and what it did for him.
“It was a clever way to attract mainstream attention and expand beyond the comparatively small boxing audience.
“He became a celebrity much the way Paris Hilton and Kim Kardashian became celebrities. It wasn’t so much for any particular talent, because the mainstream doesn’t care much for boxing talent. It was because of the opulent lifestyle he portrayed.”
Mayweather is criticized for his extreme existentialism. He defines himself publicly by whatever external measures he pleases, most often aggrandizing things like materialism and wealth while minimizing certain aspects of competition. Perhaps Mayweather’s definition of greatness has more to do with how much money he can retire with in his bank account than how great the fighters were that he defeated, and because of that, the people in the sport shun him for uprooting their own sense of boxing’s more traditional values.
Or maybe none of that is true and Mayweather is simply a product of his time. Fighters today do not treat their careers the same way old-timers did. Where 70 years ago boxers engaged in bouts every month and ran up careers that spanned 200-plus fights, today once a fighter reaches a certain level it is assumed he will carefully choose just two or three fights a year at the most.
Should Mayweather be blamed for that, especially considering all we know today about the physical damage that occurs to a boxer’s brain and body?
Losses on a fighter’s resume in the previous era of the sport meant he had put in work against the toughest competition available and that he was a seasoned professional. Today, one or two losses can send even the top fighters to the brink of irrelevancy. Look no further than formerly undefeated light heavyweight Sergey Kovalev, who is reportedly considering retirement at the age of 34 after being defeated twice by the pound-for-pound best fighter in the sport, Andre Ward.
Regardless, it’s difficult to gauge how much of Mayweather’s legacy has been defined by those who criticize the wrong aspects of his overall work.
In the end, perhaps it is as simple as this: Mayweather was as great a fighter as his time period allowed. He captured 15 world titles in five different weight classes. He fought and defeated the single greatest rival to his claim as the era’s best in Pacquiao, and he did so decisively. And at 40 years old in the final fight of his legendary career, he put on a spectacular show against the most feared fighter in the world today, knocking him out in Round 10 of perhaps the biggest pay-per-view event in boxing history.
It was a promotion chock-full of offensive moments.
And from the instant publicity-tour microphones went live in Los Angeles to the end of the final fight-week presser in Las Vegas, neither Floyd Mayweather Jr. nor Conor McGregor showed much regard for…
It was a promotion chock-full of offensive moments.
And from the instant publicity-tour microphones went live in Los Angeles to the end of the final fight-week presser in Las Vegas, neither Floyd Mayweather Jr. nor Conor McGregor showed much regard for the rules of decency and professional conduct as they sold their product.
Mayweather’s steady stream of F-bombs sent both censors and frazzled parents scrambling for mute-button cover, while the Irishman’s “dance for me, boy” taunt and subsequent “I’m half black from the belly button down” double-down won’t earn him awards from the NAACP any time soon.
But that doesn’t mean every syllable out of their mouths was worthy of angst.
Case in point: McGregor’s post-fight chat with Showtime’s Jim Gray, which prompted confusion and anger on social media thanks to the MMA star’s suggestions that he “turned [Mayweather] into a Mexican” and that the 40-year-old winner “fought like a Mexican” to beat him.
Gray’s initial reaction was a wide smile and hearty laugh, but within moments on Twitter and elsewhere came indignant claims that McGregor was yet again guilty of racism and insensitivity.
But, in this case at least, it could hardly be further from the truth.
As Gray or any other plugged-in boxing watcher will tell you, branding a fighter as “Mexican” is universally considered high praise and means that fighter eschews the hit-and-don’t-get-hit philosophy in favor of a rugged, come-forward approach in which seeking and destroying are the main objectives.
For much of the sport’s history, Mexican boxers have employed these entertaining, fan-friendly tactics, giving fighters from the country an admirable brand, similar to how Brazilian soccer players are known for their unparalleled skill and flair on the pitch.
Julio Cesar Chavez Sr. is widely considered the form’s modern standard-bearer thanks to a proclivity for vicious body punching, and others often mentioned among its recent best are fellow Hall of Famers like Ruben Olivares, Carlos Zarate and Marco Antonio Barrera and slam-dunk future inductee Erik Morales. Of their 381 career victories, 308 came by KO or TKO.
Meanwhile, Mayweather has forever been known as a defensive master and counterattacker, and, prior to Saturday, he hadn’t scored an undisputed stoppage in a fight since he waxed another tough-talking European import, Ricky Hatton, in December 2007.
But he was an all-out offensive force against McGregor, working the body early, becoming more aggressive as his foe grew fatigued and eventually landing 152 of 261 power punches, according to CompuBox—a super-efficient 58.2 percent—before the end came at 1:05 of Round 10.
It was a label well-earned.
And it’s not as if Mayweather’s the only one to whom it’s been non-ethnically affixed.
Popular multi-belt champ Gennady Golovkin—born and raised more than 6,000 miles away in Kazakhstan—has wholeheartedly embraced the “Mexican style” on the way to an imminent middleweight showdown with Guadalajara, Mexico, native and former 160-pound title claimant Canelo Alvarez.
He’s an aggressive stalker with power in both hands and walks opponents down with a violent intent that yielded 23 straight KOs from November 2008 to September 2016. In fact, over 37 pro fights since he won a silver medal at the 2004 Summer Olympics, he’s fought just 172 rounds—an average of 4.6 per fight.
The approach has made him one of HBO’s most marketable fighters. The cable giant will carry the Golovkin-Alvarez fight on its pay-per-view arm, and it’s expected to do big numbers.
“I train all of my fighters to fight in the Mexican style, to be assassins,” Golovkin’s Mexico-born trainer, Abel Sanchez, said via The Sweet Science. “It’s the only way you can protect yourself from bad decisions from the judges.”
And it’s not as if Golovkin is going it alone.
Another export from the ex-Soviet bloc, featherweight Evgeny Gradovich, won 19 straight fights, earned a 126-pound championship belt and was nicknamed the Mexican Russian after “stalking and battering [then-champ Billy Dib] with the ferocity of a feral animal” (via Maxim) in their first fight in March 2013.
Gradovich racked up four successful title defenses—including a TKO of Dib in a rematch—before losing his belt on a cut-induced technical decision. He’s won four of five fights since he was dethroned and remains a top-10 contender at 122 pounds, according to the IBF (No. 8), WBA (No. 6) and WBO (No. 5).
He was also included on the initial “Gatti List”—Jim Lampley’s rundown of the sport’s most entertaining fighters—on the inaugural episode of HBO’s The Fight Game.
The moral of the story: If it’s good for one tough guy, it’s good for another.
So even though McGregor’s track record is one of juvenile vulgarity, this time he deserves a pass because he was right.
For one farewell night in Las Vegas, Mayweather was “Mexican Money.”
When the dust settled in Las Vegas Saturday night, the fight between Conor McGregor and Floyd Mayweather Jr. had takeaways that should send everyone home happy.
Money walked away from the fight with his perfect record extended to 50-0. The Notori…
When the dust settled in Las Vegas Saturday night, the fight between ConorMcGregor and Floyd Mayweather Jr. had takeaways that should send everyone home happy.
Money walked away from the fight with his perfect record extended to 50-0. The Notorious came away a very wealthy man who put up a similar fight to every other boxer who has tried to beat Mayweather. Fans were treated to a wildly entertaining fight right up to the 10th-round stoppage.
Everybody wins.
The fact that it was an entertaining fight may have been a shock to some, but the bout simply followed a pattern that most Mayweather fights follow. The difference is that McGregor is a bit more aggressive than your average Money opponent, and the boxing legend was more willing to exchange.
The pattern that was evident was that of the slow start from Mayweather followed by a strong comeback. ESPN Stats & Info provided the numbers around the basic outline:
The first three rounds set up an interesting contest from the jump. Many didn’t know what to expect in the opening moments of this bout, as McGregor was making his boxing debut. The slow start for Mayweather allowed McGregor to get his own game going.
Notorious came out swinging and looked to take control of the bout. He did so through sheer volume and activity but wasn’t efficient, as evidenced by his percentage of punches landed in the early going.
As ShoStats noted, he threw a staggering 140 power punches through the first four rounds.
It was a double-edged sword for Notorious. While he was able to take control of the fight early and make it exciting, it was reminiscent of his first fight with Nate Diaz. In that fight, McGregor threw an impressive 74 significant strikes in the first five-minute round, per FightMetric.
The volume gave him the upper hand in the round, but it ultimately lost him the war. He came out in the second round of that fight clearly gassed, and Diaz was able to get the finish in the next round.
In the rematch, McGregor cut down his first-round output to just 58 significant strikes, picked his shots and won a five-round decision. If Notorious made any mistakes that could have changed the outcome of the fight, it was that he didn’t understand the boxing concept of taking rounds off.
In all, McGregor threw 323 power punches, which means that roughly 43 percent of the output in the 10-round fight came from the first four rounds, per ShoStats:
In his post-fight interview, McGregor admitted that fatigue played a big role in his undoing. Where he gets a little more leeway to recover in boxing, referee Robert Byrd was quick to put a stop to the fight as McGregor stumbled his way to the stoppage.
“I was just a little fatigued. He was just a lot more composed with his shots,” McGregor said of the stoppage, per Luke Brown of The Independent. “When you’re in here in the squared circle, everything is different. Let the man put me down, that’s fatigue, that’s not damage.”
While Mayweather got the win, the question of whether McGregor could compete was answered with a resounding yes. Money got the finish, but not before McGregor landed 111 punches against one of the best defensive boxers ever.
The Notorious’ punch count was higher than Manny Pacquiao’s and in the neighborhood of CaneloAlvarez‘s, who fought Mayweather to a majority decision. Iain Kidd of Bloody Elbow noted the comparison:
His performance at least opens the door to a return fight in boxing at some point. While McGregor is already a proven championship fighter in MMA, he proved he could also hang in the sweet science.
Losing to Mayweather doesn’t mean that McGregor isn’t a good boxer. If anything, it only proved that McGregor is similar to the rest of the boxing world in their inability to sustain success against Money over the course of 12 rounds.
Just like the Diaz fight it will be interesting to see what adjustments McGregor would make if he ever returns to boxing. After that performance, there would certainly be a market for it.
When a fight comes to a close, it doesn’t take long to ask the inevitable question: what’s next?