Following last weeks both controversial an exhausting world tour, August 26’s Floyd Mayweather vs. Conor McGregor is rapidly approaching from the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas. McGregor will attempt to do something no man has ever done, and that’s defeat the 49-0 Mayweather in a boxing ring. And the Irishman will do it without a […]
Following last weeks both controversial an exhausting world tour, August 26’s Floyd Mayweather vs. Conor McGregor is rapidly approaching from the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas.
McGregor will attempt to do something no man has ever done, and that’s defeat the 49-0 Mayweather in a boxing ring. And the Irishman will do it without a true professional boxing fight to his credit, even if his trash talk and pre-fight hype has somehow placed him as roughly a +400 underdog on the quickly shrinking odds, a figure fall smaller than many of Mayweather’s recent opponents who were considered some of the best pugilists in the sport.
That’s a testament to “The Notorious’” sheer ability to promote a fight and get fans believing in him, and it’s obvious that Mayweather has partnered with SHOWTIME Sports to become the biggest name in boxing himself, even if he has been retired for two years. It all leads to a massive co-promotion with the UFC that could legitimately be the biggest combat sports fight of all-time.
With the date just over a month away, SHOWTIME released the official fight poster (not the announcement poster) on Twitter this weekend. Check it out:
Most mixed martial arts (MMA) fans and media members will most likely agree they are glad that last week’s exhausting Mayweather vs. McGregor world tour is over, as the media spectacle hyping August 26’s boxing super fight from Las Vegas devolved into a contrived circus of off-color and unnecessary back-and-forths plain and simple. Those unadvisable […]
Most mixed martial arts (MMA) fans and media members will most likely agree they are glad that last week’s exhausting Mayweather vs. McGregor world tour is over, as the media spectacle hyping August 26’s boxing super fight from Las Vegas devolved into a contrived circus of off-color and unnecessary back-and-forths plain and simple.
Those unadvisable gaffs included McGregor’s supposed ongoing racism, claims he denied only to continue making even more crass and specific jokes concerning race, this time while humping the air at Brooklyn’s absolute flop of a press conference. Mayweather, perhaps miffed and looking to do the Irishman one better, did just as bad when he blurted out a homophobic slur at McGregor.
The press event tour did produce some equally memorable moments, however, as many felt the second stop in Toronto pushed the hype into the stratosphere. And much of it was because of McGregor’s golden tongue, as he spit out slick, stinging one-liners that required so little effort that it seemed to bring out the old, seemingly long-gone trash-talking version of Mayweather.
One joke among several that stuck for McGregor was his reference of Mayweather’s muscled bodyguards as ‘juiceheads’ after they ‘formed Voltron’ around him at the Brooklyn conference. One of those security specialists is named Greg La Rosa, and he recently addressed the situation in an interview with Submission Radio (via Bloody Elbow):
“….He looked over at me and the other guy Ray (Jizzy Mack) and he said, ‘look at these two juice heads,’” La Rosa recalled. “So I guess at that point he probably had enough of him, he had to go at me. So I thought it was very, he looked at me and he said, ‘look at these two juice heads,’ and Floyd, I can’t remember what Floyd said after that. Floyd said something after that.”
“So I think he walked away for a bit and then he came back and said some stuff to me like, ‘you’re on juice,’ and I told him right there, I said, ‘no, never,’” he continued. “I said, ‘I’m not’. I said, ‘I’ll do a USADA test right now and I’ll bet you a hundred thousand dollars that I’m not,’ and he said, ‘yeah right, yeah right,’ and I said, ‘I’ll take it right now, I’ll take the blood right after the show.’”
“And it kind of got him like, ‘no way’ and he said, I think he said something along the lines of, ‘this is a real body,’ or something. And then I just told him, I said, ‘you know what, when you’re standing next to me’, I said, ‘put on a shirt cause you’re embarrassing yourself standing next to me’. I figured it would just rattle him up a little bit. That’s all it is for me.”
SHOWTIME Sports
So La Rosa is just trying to get inside McGregor’s head and help Team Money pick up the win in the massive super fight, yet no one has yet to do that in any of his fights in MMA. “The Notorious” is clearly one of the most confident athletes in combat sports, but he is going up against a legendary fighter whom many feel is arguably the greatest boxer of all-time.
La Rosa acknowledged his skills and praised McGregor for his accomplishments in both the cage and in promotion, but overall, he thinks the UFC’s leading name is just out of his league here, and that became clear when he rubbed Mayweather’s head at the final world tour stop in London:
“Conor’s an excellent athlete, he’s an even better promoter, I take my hat off to him,” La Rosa said. “He’s done things in four years that people didn’t even think were possible, so I got nothing negative to say in that aspect. But in terms of getting in Floyd’s head – impossible. I believe the turning point of what showed that he couldn’t get in his head is at the point when he touched his head in London.
“To me, that showed a sign of weakness in Conor because basically, the touch, you’re not supposed to be touching the other guy obviously, and I believe that touch was to try to bring something out of Floyd and he was basically saying, to me anyways, that I can’t do with words, I can’t do with actions, I need to try to do something else here,” he added.
“And even when he touched him, Floyd wasn’t even paying attention. He was on his phone and was just laughing at him, just laughing. He was talking to other people while Conor was doing his bit and I think that was really getting to Conor.”
Despite some highly entertaining and shining moments (mostly on Wednesday’s Toronto stop), both the MMA and boxing worlds can definitely savior the end of this week’s at times cringeworthy Mayweather vs. McGregor world tour spanning four cities and three countries after a plethora of racial and homophobic talk damaged the hype of a bout that […]
Despite some highly entertaining and shining moments (mostly on Wednesday’s Toronto stop), both the MMA and boxing worlds can definitely savior the end of this week’s at times cringeworthy Mayweather vs. McGregor world tour spanning four cities and three countries after a plethora of racial and homophobic talk damaged the hype of a bout that has already drawn a ton of criticism for being nothing but a massive spectacle.
Of course, yesterday’s final press conference in London was marred by Floyd Mayweather’s colorful choice of slurs thrown at McGregor, but “The Notorious” also provided some lighter moments to make the final stop an at least so-so end to the bizarre, drug-out promotional whirlwind of this week.
One of those was when, despite having UFC President Dana White tasked with stopping him from touching him, he rubbed Mayweather’s shining head during his time on the mic. Watch the hilarious scene via Gifdsports on Twitter:
It may have provided some entertaining moments and hype-building quips, but overall it’s safe to say the collective combat sports world is glad the four-city, three-country Mayweather vs. McGregor world tour is over. The media whirlwind hit a high note on Wednesday in Toronto where “The Notorious” received a huge pop from the Canadian crowd […]
It may have provided some entertaining moments and hype-building quips, but overall it’s safe to say the collective combat sports world is glad the four-city, three-country Mayweather vs. McGregor world tour is over.
The media whirlwind hit a high note on Wednesday in Toronto where “The Notorious” received a huge pop from the Canadian crowd as he unleashed all of his best one-liners, which nearly all of hit home with hilarity.
The exact opposite was true of the following day’s stop in Brooklyn, New York, however, where he mockingly addressed accusations of racism earlier in the week with an extremely off-color sexual innuendo before humping the air for his female African American fans:
“Let’s address the race,” McGregor said. “A lot of media seem to be saying I’m against black people. That’s absolutely f*cking ridiculous! Do they not know I’m half black? Yeah, I’m half black from the belly-button down! And just to show that’s squashed, here’s a little present for my beautiful, black, female fans (humps air slowly).”
That scene drew a response from Mayweather, who had previously chose to let McGregor’s supposed racial undertones slide. After the Brooklyn press conference, however, “Money” could no longer keep quiet, and spoke up in support of his diverse team (via MMA Fighting):
“Disrespecting my daughter, disrespecting the mother of my daughter, disrespecting black women, calling black people monkeys is totally disrespectful. I have a diverse team. A diverse staff. And when I was young, I may have said some things I shouldn’t have said because I was young. But you live, you learn and you don’t say those things when you get to a certain age because it’s all about growth and maturity.
“Today, he came out today and did it again…I guess when he gets older he’ll look back and say I probably shouldn’t have said that.”
But “Money” wasn’t squeaky-clean in the whole situation, either, as clapped back at McGregor’s racial comments by making an extremely ill-advised homophobic slur at McGregor during the final press conference stop in London yesterday. That pretty much signaled that the entire world tour had devolved into little more than a spectacle for a fight that was already well past that point in the first place; let’s be honest.
And it appears that McGregor knows it as well, as the ultra-popular UFC champion spoke up at the post-press conference media scrum in London via MacLife on Facebook to admit his racially charged jokes didn’t find a home:
According to the megastar, the jokes didn’t play out like he wanted them to, and he was now going to leave it alone, as most ‘realistic’ people would know he is not a bigot:
“It didn’t really hit right. I’m just gonna stay where it is and leave it out. I know who I am as a person. I think most realistic people can look and know.”
So while “The Notorious” insists that anyone who truly knows him knows he is far from racist, that insistence will obviously be questioned by many after this week.
But even though his words will be dissected and disparaged as being focused on skin color, he cautioned his fans and everyone else to realize Mayweather is supposedly trying to turn this into something bigger than it is to sway fans to his favor:
“You can be fooled by him if you want to be fooled by him,” McGregor said. “You know the man’s character, you know his history. He’s trying to sway the people in his favor. I think it was a cheap, little [play]. … I was trying to address something in my own little way. But whatever. It is what it is. I had fun with it last night. If he feels disrespected, well he’s an idiot and then f*ck him as well.”
Finally, McGregor also offered his belief that the entire press conference tour became a game where people were keeping score, one in which he thought he won all four rounds even if the public opinion varies. With that established, McGregor chose to move on and shift his focus to preparing for what matters most – the fight on August 26:
“It became something different than before, like a battle almost, like a verbal type of battle and people were scoring it. I can’t anticipate something like the way it was, like it was going back and forth. But if you’re gonna do that, then f*ck it, let’s do it. I smoked him four rounds, I believe.
“It’s done now, it’s wrapped up. Let’s get ready to fight.”
With the promotional storm for their highly anticipated boxing match at times both exhilarating and cringe-worthy throughout this week’s press conference world tour, Floyd Mayweather and Conor McGregor finally ended their exhausting media spectacle with the fourth and final stop in London, England today. The tour-ending presser had all the expected lines, like McGregor continuing […]
With the promotional storm for their highly anticipated boxing match at times both exhilarating and cringe-worthy throughout this week’s press conference world tour, Floyd Mayweather and Conor McGregor finally ended their exhausting media spectacle with the fourth and final stop in London, England today.
Through this week’s four-city, three-country world tour, UFC lightweight champion Conor McGregor has gained a ton of criticism in the media for his supposedly racist trash talk against Floyd Mayweather heading into their awaited August 26 showdown from the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas. The Irish megastar drew heat for calling Mayweather ‘boy’ and telling […]
Through this week’s four-city, three-country world tour, UFC lightweight champion Conor McGregor has gained a ton of criticism in the media for his supposedly racist trash talk against Floyd Mayweather heading into their awaited August 26 showdown from the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas.
The Irish megastar drew heat for calling Mayweather ‘boy’ and telling him to dance, but never was that more apparent than it was at yesterday’s third stop in Brooklyn, New York, when he responded to the allegations by referencing the size of his genitals and then putting on a air-humping display for his female African-American fans. Not his finest moment to say the least, and even Mayweather spoke out against the behavior after initially saying he would brush it off.
But it was “Money” who blurted out at the off-color remarks at today’s (Fri., July 14, 2017) final world tour press conference in London. Towards the end of his press segment containing an otherworldly percentage of profanity, Mayweather made the ill-advised decision to blurt out a homophobic slur as well.
It all started when Mayweather revealed a supposed gameplan he had with UFC President Dana White to use foreign fighters to make big money, something White has obviously done to perfection with “The Notorious”:
“Keep pimpin’ this bitch. 21 years ago, me and you had a gameplan. We the smart ones when it’s all said and done. Yeah, we gonna take these foreign fighters, and we know how to use ‘em.
“We some smart Americans, and you out here runnin’ with a quitter? But I forget; you the pimp, and this yo’ ho.”
Mayweather disrespected McGregor by offering his belief that he was far from a worthy opponent after his lengthy undefeated reign, and he then mocked McGregor’s timepiece compared to his lavishly expensive one. But that’s when things got unnecessary, as Mayweather followed in McGregor’s shoes with an uncalled-for name:
“I’m undefeated, 21-year run, and this all y’all got to offer? You know what, this a microwave meal, I’m a home-cooked meal that settle in on your stomach. Microwave meal, that’s what you are, I’m a home-cooked meal. With your cheap-ass watch on, step your game up. (Points to his watch) $1.4 million, bitch. Shut up, shut up. Tell me what the UFC bought you? Shut the fuck up, they ain’t bought you shit bitch.”
“We gonna talk about this pussy, You punk, you faggot, you hoe!”
Mayweather then closed by saying he would be McGregor’s “teacher” on August 26:
“You had your turn. You the fuckin’ student, I’m the teacher. August 26, I take you to school.”
And not to be outdone, McGregor hearkened back to a hilarious quote from the Toronto presser by making fun of Mayweather’s backpack:
“Make sure to bring your schoolbag.”
So the world tour press conferences are in the books, and although the attention bounced back a bit after yesterday’s dud in Brooklyn, the continued off-color slurs of both men will most likely mean that many are glad the promotional sandstorm is over – even if this is legitimately one of the biggest fights of all-time.
What is your opinion? Did Mayweather and MCGregor take it too far, or are they simply hyping up the super fight?
