A sure way to start an argument between boxing and mixed martial arts fans is to ask one simple question.
“What if?”
What if a top mixed martial artist stepped in the boxing ring to take on a world-class boxer? Or what if the boxer stepped in the Octag…
A sure way to start an argument between boxing and mixed martial arts fans is to ask one simple question.
“What if?”
What if a top mixed martial artist stepped in the boxing ring to take on a world-class boxer? Or what if the boxer stepped in the Octagon?
It’s an argument as old as combat sports itself. Before MMA sprang to life in the 1990s, the debate raged between boxing and pro wrestling fans. Which sport had the toughest athletes?
Promoters tried to capitalize on the discussion—most notably with the debacle between Muhammad Ali and Antonio Inoki in 1976—but the scripted environment of pro wrestling offered few answers.
Now, with the upcoming boxing match between Floyd Mayweather Jr. and Conor McGregor, fans finally have their first opportunity to see high-level fighters from both sports facing off.
To celebrate Mayweather vs. McGregor’s “fantasy turned reality” vibe, we’re going to name seven other dream boxing vs. MMA fights we wish we could’ve seen.
Ariel Helwani has always had pretty good access to the stars of MMA.
As one of the foremost journalistic presences in the sport, it’s no wonder Conor McGregor would handpick him to participate in his biggest moments—even in the face of Helwani be…
Ariel Helwani has always had pretty good access to the stars of MMA.
As one of the foremost journalistic presences in the sport, it’s no wonder Conor McGregor would handpick him to participate in his biggest moments—even in the face of Helwani being on the outs with the UFC since 2016.
Helwani has walked the streets of Dublin with McGregor before he was a superstar, spent an evening on stage with McGregor for a pay-per-view interview this January and sat on the edge of a McGregor Sports & Entertainment boxing ring discussing the definitive clip of Malignaggigate.
OK. Rethink the name maybe. But the point remains the same.
After considerable chirping back and forth between them, Paulie Malignaggi, a retired boxer and commentator for Showtime boxing, went to Las Vegas to do some sparring with McGregor, who is preparing for his August 26 bout against Floyd Mayweather Jr.
Drama ensued.
After only a couple of days, pictures emerged on social media of Malignaggi, winded and badly wearing it. Not long after, there was another of him on the canvas while McGregor stood proudly in the center of the ring.
Malignaggi, fiercely proud and not much of a McGregor fan to begin with, left the camp as quickly as he’d arrived and went on an all-out media blitz to dress down everything from McGregor’s punching power to his real estate choices.
He insisted that McGregor had pushed him and the whole thing was a conspiracy set up by McGregor’s people and the UFC. Video of the incident, which UFC President Dana White“leaked” on Friday, seemed to pretty convincingly show McGregor pawing at Malignaggi with a lead right hand then landing a left, putting the “Magic Man” on his behind in the process.
In any event, it was easily the most ink Malignaggi has gotten in years and even has people wondering if the whole thing might be a hustle to set up a legitimate fight with McGregor down the line.
And once again it’s Helwani with the access—in a clip released Saturday on the MMA Fighting Twitter account, he shows McGregor the video White leaked and gets his thoughts on the whole feud.
Check out the Malignaggi material in the tweet below:
Or watch the entire, 23-minute interview with McGregor below:
So what do you think? Punch or push? Have your say in the comments below!
There was a moment when it became clear Conor McGregor was an undeniable force.
It was a little over three years into his UFC run.
He was the reigning featherweight champion of the world and was moments away from becoming the lightweight champion as we…
There was a moment when it became clear ConorMcGregor was an undeniable force.
It was a little over three years into his UFC run.
He was the reigning featherweight champion of the world and was moments away from becoming the lightweight champion as well—the first man or woman to ever achieve simultaneous reigns in separate divisions in UFC history.
At UFC 205, the promotion’s long-awaited debut in New York City, which emanated from the vaunted Madison Square Garden, McGregor headlined against Eddie Alvarez. Alvarez, for his part, was a worthy adversary in every way, a stalwart who could wrestle and box and had gone 28-of-32 in MMA fights before that night.
McGregor appeared unruffled, however.
Entering the cage, he strutted and swayed about, arms swinging exaggeratedly as if to exude a looseness he apparently felt down to his core. It was the pinnacle of physical confidence, this ability to make something so silly into a foreshadowing of the swaggering way he’d dispatch Alvarez moments later.
What’s more, he aped it from pro wrestling icon Vince McMahon. The “Billionaire Strut” was once a staple of McMahon’s villainous on-air persona. In a way, you can’t get much more absurd than that.
Yet McGregor embraced the absurdity. He doubled down on a mink coat (Note: linked article contains NSFW language) he’d worn days prior at the event’s pre-fight press conference.
“I’m thinking Vince McMahon must be pissed,” he said during a pay-per-view interview in January 2017. “I stole that walk, and that walk is now mine. That’s my walk. I created that walk. I made that walk.”
And it is.
It’s his because while McMahon was doing it for years, it was only after McGregor broke it out moments before his crowning athletic achievement that you started seeing other celebrities and athletes aping him.
That was the moment you could no longer ignore McGregor’s unfathomable rise in modern sports culture. Seeing global superstars pinch his act in the name of coolness cemented him as an icon, an inspiration to some and an attention-grabber to all. It’s what’s made him a cultural force well before his 30th birthday.
Ten months after arriving at the highest levels of the sports world, McGregor has used his exploding fame to land one of the biggest paydays in boxing history—and the biggest payday ever collected by an MMA fighter.
He’ll fight Floyd Mayweather Jr. on August 26 in a contest that should net him $100 million despite his never having competed in professional boxing.
The notion that it’s happening is a testament to how much people want to see McGregor in action. Yes, he’s fighting the biggest draw in boxing history and that’s where much of the money is coming from, but Mayweather was retired before McGregor came along and drew him back in for one more enormous payout.
“We’re not here to cry about money. I’m tired of all this crying about money and talking about [how McGregor wants] to fight,” Mayweather said on a media tour earlier this year, per FightHype.com (Warning: video contains NSFW language). “[He’s] blowing smoke up everybody’s ass.”
He continued: “If [he wants] to fight, sign the paperwork, let’s do it. Today, I’m officially out of retirement for ConorMcGregor. We don’t need to waste no time.”
They didn’t. The bout was announced in June, a mere 10 weeks out from it happening, the ultimate sprint to fight night. As has been known to happen, McGregor got his way when most thought it impossible.
A big part of McGregor’s rise through the ranks and into prominence has been linked to his cultivation of an image.
He’s a modern athlete for modern times in that sense, speaking in shareable quotes and soundbites, blending streetwise wisdom with inspirational philosophy, using Twitter and Instagram to display decadence and opulence that the famous relate to and the proletariat aspires to.
As Jeremy Botter of Bleacher Report put it in July 2015, “[McGregor] is a quote machine, always good for a headline. He says things few others in the sport of mixed martial arts will, and he takes direct aim at current and future opponents with a razor-sharp tongue.”
A quick scroll through McGregor‘s social media accounts shows him shopping on Rodeo Drive, bragging about having statues made in his image or modeling some variety of clothing or car that only the most confident men on Earth would be caught dead in.
He’s shown up at events in a gaudy mink coat, something that looked like it came off of a polar bear but still managed to have a dragon emblazoned across it and, of course, the instantly famous “f–k you” suit he rocked for his first public meeting with Mayweather.
He makes no apologies for who he is, and he makes sure the masses know about it every step of the way. It’s the type of shrewd maneuvering uniquely tailored to his era, where everyone is connected by a device in their pocket or on their desk or in their lap and they can voyeuristically watch his rise to the top whenever they fancy.
Love him or hate him, there is no ignoring him.
The inability to ignore McGregor has blossomed into full-blown fascination with him now, in sports and beyond. The rich and the famous will be ringside to see him fight Mayweather, and people all over the planet will plunk down $100 to watch him do the same from their homes.
It’s reasonable to expect McGregor, win or lose, will use the opportunity he’s created for himself on August 26 to transcend sports culture and bleed over into the mainstream going forward.
It’s been a meteoric rise the likes of which has almost never been seen in sports, and it’s culminated in circumstances that would never have been possible at any other point in history. It also wouldn’t have been possible with any other athlete.
McGregor understands what it takes to be great in his craft, but he also understands what it takes to be great outside of it. He’s exploded from the shackles of the UFC to become a one-man enterprise, an athlete and promoter who’s the richest in his sport and looking to become the richest, period.
If his bank account continues to grow like his profile has, before long there’ll be nothing absurd about his Billionaire Strut at all.
UFC President Dana White posted video Friday of Conor McGregor’s sparring session with former IBF and WBA champion Paulie Malignaggi.
In the first video, McGregor can be seen connecting on several punches to Malignaggi’s head, including…
UFC President Dana White posted video Friday of Conor McGregor’s sparring session with former IBF and WBA champion Paulie Malignaggi.
In the first video, McGregor can be seen connecting on several punches to Malignaggi’s head, including a vicious left:
The second post shows Malignaggi falling to the canvas after a flurry of McGregor punches:
Malignaggi had been in McGregor’s camp to help the UFC lightweight champion prepare for his Aug. 26 fight against Floyd Mayweather Jr., but he abruptly left afterphotos leaked of him on the canvas during a sparring session on Aug. 1.
“I believe Conor and I have a mutual respect inside the ring, earned from each other with some good work over two sparring sessions,”Malignaggi said, according to CBS Sports’Brian Campbell. “It’s some of the stuff outside the ring and some ways some things were handled in training camp that I didn’t agree with that made me come to this decision.”
On Friday, McGregor addressed Malignaggi’s departure and said he thought it was best for the 36-year-old to take a step back since he was exposing himself to punishment in practice.
“It shows his character in my opinion,” McGregor said, per MMAMania’sDan Hiergesell. “He was looking for an exit. The spars were not good for him. He took a lot of head trauma. Straight after it we were worried. The sparring partners were actually telling us when he was drove back to the home he was stumbling out of the car after the 12-rounder.”
Malignaggi maintained in a series of tweets that snapshots didn’t paint a clear picture of their sessions.
Rather, he has insistedvideo be released of the full 12-round affair so fans can see thathe got the better ofMcGregor.
According to Campbell, Malignaggi will still fulfill his duties on Showtime’s pay-per-view broadcast team when the fight is aired Aug. 26.
On Friday, an anonymous bettor in Las Vegas placed an $880,000 wager on Floyd Mayweather Jr. to defeat Conor McGregor when they duke it out Aug. 26 at T-Mobile Arena.
According to ESPN.com’s David Purdum, the bet “is believed to be the largest pl…
On Friday, an anonymous bettor in Las Vegas placed an $880,000 wager on Floyd Mayweather Jr. to defeat Conor McGregor when they duke it out Aug. 26 at T-Mobile Arena.
According to ESPN.com’s David Purdum, the bet “is believed to be the largest placed on the fight in Las Vegas at this point.”
The slip, which Vegas Stats & Information’s Mitch Moss posted on Twitter, shows the bettor took Mayweather at minus-550:
Purdum noted that while the slip says there’s a payout of $120,000, the actual winnings would total $160,000. That’s because South Point Casino’s computer system doesn’t print slips with payouts over $1 million.
As a workaround, South Point reportedly decided to print up a pair of $440,000 slips for the anonymous bettor.
As of Friday, Mayweather remained a minus-550 favorite with McGregor penciled in as a plus-375 underdog.
Those numbers represent a significant shift from theopening oddsin November that had Mayweather listed at minus-2250 and McGregor at plus-950.
The huge night in Las Vegas is getting closer and closer. With just over two weeks to go before Floyd Mayweather Jr. and Conor McGregor square off in their boxing match at T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, both fighters are starting to turn up the inte…
The huge night in Las Vegas is getting closer and closer. With just over two weeks to go before Floyd Mayweather Jr. and Conor McGregor square off in their boxing match at T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, both fighters are starting to turn up the intensity in their preparations for the fight.
Preparations, however, are not the same as training sessions, at least for Mayweather. Through the first two episodes of Showtime’s All Access series, the undefeated fighter had not gone into a serious training mode. He had vacationed with his family, showed off his bricks of $100 bills and gone on shopping sprees, but he did not pummel the speed bag, overpower the heavy bag or spar with partners.
In the third episode of All Access, Mayweather still was not in the training mode at the start. He was riding horses, buying a black hat and having a good time with his crew. It left observers wondering what was going through Money’s mind as he prepared for this huge fight.
McGregor was in the UFC training gym working on his boxing skills. His main striking coach is Owen Roddy, who has been part of McGregor’s team since he started his career. Roddy’s influence has been an essential part of McGregor’s success in the UFC, because the Irish fighter’s greatest weapon is his ability to hurt opponents with his punches.
However, hurting UFC fighters and making contact with Mayweather are two different things. Mayweather’s defensive prowess has been remarkable throughout his 49-0 run in the ring, and if he has some rust to his game, it is not likely to show up on the defensive end.
When Mayweather finally returned to the gym, it was to host his good friend Snoop Dogg. The entertainer has long been a friend and supporter of Mayweather, and he came to Las Vegas to conduct an interview for his podcast. Did Floyd put on his gloves and train in a serious manner? No.
While this was going on, Paulie Malignaggi returned to the ring to spar with McGregor. Once again, McGregor refused to let the All Access cameras tape the action.
McGregor emerged saying he scored a decisive 12-0 victory over the former fighter and current analyst. McGregor thanked Malignaggi for his effort, but he said he dominated all 12 rounds.
Malignaggi was not happy. He acknowledged he was on the canvas at least once, but he said it was the result of a shove from his opponent. He was asking McGregor to release the tape of the sparring session so the world could see. The request fell on deaf ears.
Finally, after showing his humanity by welcoming a young cancer patient named Taylor Hammond to his gym, Mayweather did some training at the end of the show.
While he was not shown sparring, he had his gloves on, he was working up a sweat, and he was preparing for the fight. It might not have been the most rigorous training session, but he was finally working out in the gym.
Will that be enough to prepare for the cocky McGregor? That will be determined when the two men meet Aug. 26.
Ariel Helwani has always had pretty good access to the stars of MMA.