WBO Super Featherweight champion Vasyl Lomachenko has offered to spar with Conor McGregor, ahead of the UFC star’s bout against Floyd Mayweather in Nevada on Saturday, August 26.
Lomachenko made his offer on his official Twitter account:
If McGr…
WBO Super Featherweight champion Vasyl Lomachenko has offered to spar with Conor McGregor, ahead of the UFC star’s bout against Floyd Mayweather in Nevada on Saturday, August 26.
Lomachenko made his offer on his official Twitter account:
If McGregor accepted the offer, Lomachenko would replace Paulie Malignaggi, who recently quit his role as sparring partner for the Irish UFC star. Since then, Malignaggi has been quick to offer disparaging opinions on McGregor’s skills as a boxer.
Malignaggi has toldTMZ Sports McGregor knows he would be beaten in a real bout, something the Italian wants. He also told Ariel Helwani of The MMA Hour(h/tMartin Dominof theDaily Mirror) McGregor struggled to take his body shots.
Working with a boxer the caliber of Lomachenko, as unlikely as it seems, would surely sharpen McGregor up before he steps through the ropes to face Mayweather. Ukrainian Lomachenko boasts some of the quickest hands in boxing.
He’s a big puncher, but one whose swift combinations and nifty footwork truly set him apart. Top Rank promoter Bob Arum even compared Lomachenko to Muhammad Ali after the 29-year-old beat Miguel Marriaga August, per ESPN’sDan Rafael.
Lomachenko has called out McGregor before, donning a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles outfit to do so back in March, perStuart AtkinsofThe Sun. In May, Lomachenko also used Twitter to ask McGregor if he should try stepping into the Octagon:
Lomachenko’s willingness to put McGregor through his paces could be read as a further indication of how many in the boxing world would be happy to take the Irishman down a peg or two before Mayweather gets his chance.
Paulie Malignaggi said he wants to fight Conor McGregor in a real boxing match and promised he would beat the Irish UFC star’s “ass like he stole something,” per TMZ Sports.
Malignaggi had been McGregor’s sparring partner as the reigning UFC light…
Paulie Malignaggi said he wants to fight Conor McGregor in a real boxing match and promised he would beat the Irish UFC star’s “ass like he stole something,” per TMZ Sports.
Malignaggi had been McGregor’s sparring partner as the reigning UFC lightweight champion prepares to face Floyd Mayweather Jr. on Aug. 26 at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas. The Italian pugilistwalked awayfrom the arrangement, but he told TMZ Sports he knows he could beat McGregor: “He knows it [that I could beat him]. More importantly than me knowing it, he knows it. That’s the best part.”
Malignaggi also said McGregor knew the beatings in their sparring sessions would only get worse.
This isn’t the first time Malignaggi has fired a verbal volley or two McGregor’s way. He also told Ariel Helwani ofThe MMA Hour(h/tMartin Dominof the Daily Mirror) how he got the better of the UFC star in the pair’s second and final sparring session: “He pushed me down during one of his worst rounds because he needed a break. I said ‘there’s no breaks here’ and started hitting him to the body, and he began to whimper.”
Malignaggi also referred to McGregor as a “scumbag,” during the same interview.
The words are inflammatory as well as a direct challenge to McGregor. Yet whether Malignaggi would get his wish of an actual bout against the Irishman is tough to call.
Malignaggi is no longer the draw he was, while McGregor’s future in the boxing ring will likely be determined by how he fares against Mayweather at the end of the month.
The onslaught of heated words from one boxer continues. Paulie Malignaggi has given his side of the story on the recent issues he had with UFC lightweight champion Conor McGregor. Of course, the final straw that was broken saw Malignaggi leave training camp after photos of their sparring sessions were made public. The photos made […]
The onslaught of heated words from one boxer continues.
Paulie Malignaggi has given his side of the story on the recent issues he had with UFC lightweight champion Conor McGregor. Of course, the final straw that was broken saw Malignaggi leave training camp after photos of their sparring sessions were made public. The photos made it look like Malignaggi was knocked down, but he says there are other things outside the ring that led to that decision.
According to the boxer, he claims that the reason he joined McGregor’s training camp was to simply to help prepare him for his boxing match with Floyd Mayweather.
In an extensive interview on “The MMA Hour,” Malignaggi explained what happened while not holding back on everything that bothered him about his McGregor camp experience.
“It’s something that I didn’t really ask for,” Malignaggi said. “I showed up with the best intentions in camp. At a certain point, you start to realize your being used as a pawn where somebody is trying to get ahead at your expense and not through your help. My intention was to try to get Conor ahead through my help in camp. … I realized pretty early it was always going to be at my expense.”
Malignaggi’s time with the UFC champion included two sparring sessions. Malignaggi reflected on the camp and noted that things didn’t feel right as soon as he landed in Las Vegas. He was told by McGregor’s camp as soon as he arrived in the city that they would be sparring eight rounds the next day, which was odd for him due to the fact that he had just taken a cross-country flight.
“It’s in a dilapidated neighborhood. It’s a rundown house,” Malignaggi said. “I mean, yeah, it works. But it’s not really what you expect. … It reminded me of some kind of crack house that had been barely renovated a little bit.”
Their first sparring session was on July 20th, and that is when McGregor posted a photo of himself showboating with his hands behind his back. Malignaggi said McGregor got the better of him a little bit due to bad conditioning. According to the boxer, McGregor needed more work to sharpen his intelligence.
“I was a little ticked off, but it wasn’t really like offensive,” Malignaggi said. “I had done that stuff to him, too. They just didn’t rub me the right away,” Malignaggi said. “It wasn’t like I was mad, but I said, ‘There’s something fishy about these people.’ They put me in some kind of crack house, they had me spar eight rounds after I just got off of a plane the day after, he put up this picture. I wasn’t mad, but I was starting to become guarded.”
“This guy is one of the biggest dirtbags I’ve ever met in my life – bar none,” he said. “I was amazed at what a dirtbag this person is. I don’t care if we never speak again. My life is fine if I never see Conor McGregor again. …
“I was dumbfounded by the way things were. It’s just about status with him. It makes me doubt if he ever really went through a tough time in his life like they try to say he did. If somebody went through that tough a time in life just a few years ago, they wouldn’t treat people who were not as fortunate as him that bad.”
Now that everything has happened, he is just glad that the experience of the camp is over and he is looking ahead to new adventures.
“People are going to have their own speculation about how this happened,” he said. “I have my own life. I don’t need this. I don’t need to be part of this. I didn’t ask for this. I went into it with the best intentions. Yeah, I knew we’d be competing, and it would be at a high level. But I was also excited about that. I was excited to make new friends. I was excited to be a part of something.
“I always get excited about new adventures, because that’s the kind of person I am. It was definitely an experience; it just wasn’t the experience I thought.”
The biggest fight of the year is set to go down on August 26th at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, Nevada. The bout will air on pay-per-view and is expected to be the most lucrative prize fight of all time.
Former two-weight world champion boxer Paulie Malignaggi has described Conor McGregor as “one of the biggest dirtbags I’ve ever met in my life” and that he was “very hittable” after the fifth round of one of their sparring sessions.
He told Ariel…
Former two-weight world champion boxer Paulie Malignaggi has described Conor McGregor as “one of the biggest dirtbags I’ve ever met in my life” and that he was “very hittable” after the fifth round of one of their sparring sessions.
He told Ariel Helwani on The MMA Hour (MMA Junkie’s Simon Samano): “This guy is one of the biggest dirtbags I’ve ever met in my life—bar none. I was amazed at what a dirtbag this person is. I don’t care if we never speak again. My life is fine if I never see Conor McGregor again.”
Malignaggi was brought in as a sparring partner for The Notorious ahead of his clash with Floyd Mayweather Jr., but he left the camp just two weeks in after pictures from one of their sessions were leaked to social media.
The full interview with Helwani can be seen here (warning, contains NSFW language):
Malignaggi pulled no punches during the conversation, per SevereMMA’s Sean Sheehan:
PerPeter Carrollof MMA Fighting, Malignaggi opened up on his decision to part with McGregor after asking him to ensure no more pictures leaked from their private sessions:
“I told Conor that it becomes very hard for me to not disclose the NDA that I have when you’re putting up pictures of me.
“I am not one of the other sparring partners. Nobody knows who the other sparring partners are. Everyone knows who I am. When you put up a picture of me in sparring, the media rush comes to me and I have to answer questions that I don’t want to deal with.
“I have to try [to] make you look good. I want you to look good. I want to say things that make you look good. I want to promote you and help you out, but not at my expense.”
The 36-year-old was less than pleased with McGregor’s reaction to his request, however, and branded him a “d–khead” as a result. He continued:
“He looks at me and he gives me this smirk, laughs at me and he starts walking away from me.
“He gives me his back, he’s walking away towards the showers and he’s like, ‘Ha ha, I don’t know, Paulie. We got some good ones in those last two rounds. I don’t know about that.’
“At this stage I’m waiting for Ashton Kutcher to walk into the dressing rooms and tell me I gotPunk’d. I thought it was a joke. I thought there was no way this guy is that much of an assh–e.”
MMA Fighting’s Danny Segura believes the rivalry that has since emerged between the pair would make a fight between them an even more entertaining spectacle than his clash with Mayweather:
Despite his decision to leave, the boxer insisted he had arrived at McGregor’s camp with the best intentions, per MMAFighting.com:
Malignaggi also discussed his second session with the Irishman, in which he was given 24 hours notice that he was expected to go a full 12 rounds—an unusual request of a sparring partner as they typically rotate to stay fresh when a fighter goes the distance in training, thereby making it more of a challenge.
The American was also surprised to see an entourage there to witness the session, which included UFC President Dana White and former CEO Lorenzo Fertitta, given they were typically “so private I couldn’t even bring in a trainer for my corner,” while phones had to be left in a box to prevent pictures and videos being captured.
Malignaggi believes McGregor brought them to witness what he hoped would be a knockout victory during the session.
The 29-year-old was able to get off to a bright start: “He hung tough the first five rounds. He came out sharper, with more of a purpose. He hung tough for the first rounds, he even landed a couple of good shots, but I was starting to take over.”
The 36-8 retiree explained how he got the better of McGregor: “My work was more consistent. My style was more consistent. My counter punching was sharper. My jab was sharper. There was just more consistency on my part.”
He added: “From about six rounds on, he became very hittable. So much more hittable that I was putting more weight on my shots and sitting down more on my shots, and of course, the body shots started to affect him more and more.”
Despite the pair trash-talking throughout the session, Malignaggi felt they had “buried the hatchet” afterwards and believed there was a mutual respect between the two prior to their discussion about the photos.
It may come as an encouraging sign for McGregor that he was able to cause Malignaggi problems early on, though it is claimed the boxer’s superior technique shone through.
That is likely to be even more pronounced against Money, but it will nevertheless make for a much more thrilling contest if McGregor is able to produce some strong rounds.
Paulie Malignaggi continues to go off on UFC lightweight champion Conor McGregor. Of course, the final straw that was broken saw Malignaggi leave training camp after photos of their sparring sessions were made public. The photos made it look like Malignaggi was knocked down, but he says there are other things outside the ring that […]
Paulie Malignaggi continues to go off on UFC lightweight champion Conor McGregor. Of course, the final straw that was broken saw Malignaggi leave training camp after photos of their sparring sessions were made public. The photos made it look like Malignaggiwas knocked down, but he says there are other things outside the ring that led to that decision.
Malignaggi has come out and stated that he felt like he was being “set up” in sparring. However, the former two-division champion has now revealed a bit more of what he didn’t like from the experience.
“My problems isn’t just with the sparring. My problem is the way he treats people, the way he treats the other sparring partners,” Malignaggi said on Fox 5’s Sports Xtra (transcript courtesy of Bloody Elbow). “He’s on the bit on the cheap side. You have a hundred million dollar fight, you can splurge a little bit more on training camp, especially the way you treat the sparring partners and the living quarters and what not.”
Malignaggi claims that he never asked for anything extra, but he was floored by the way that the sparring partners were being treated, especially considering how lucrative the fight is.
“I asked for nothing, no special treatment. I wanted to be like the sparring partners,” he said. “In a bit of good faith, I wanted to go over there and stay with the sparring partners. I didn’t negotiate my price. Whatever first price they gave me, I accepted that as far as payment was concerned — which I never got paid by the way. I never tried to make things difficult for them, but I assumed things would be on a moderate living conditions. They really weren’t,” he explained. “A little on the cheap side, like I said.
“I put it like this, I’ve never been part of a 100 million dollar fight, but I’ve been part of multiple fights where there’s been million dollar purses in there. So once you’ve been part of 7 and 8 figure purses — 9 figures in this case — you understand how to treat this training camp and how to properly budget it without being too cheap, but without overspending. There’s people involved, and there’s a team involved, and you need to take care of them too.”
Malignaggi also shined some light on how the irony with how they were being treated, and the image McGregor is trying to maintain in public. According to the former boxing champion, McGregor is a cheap human being.
“And I’ve never seen such a cheap guy in my life, in all my training camps. I was blown away with this guy, with the treatment he’s given everybody,” he said. “But he made sure he rented himself a Lamborghini in Vegas, which was like ‘what is it about? You don’t respect anybody else? I mean these are the people helping you. Is it about status with you?’ I don’t understand what it was.”
The back-and-forth banter between Conor McGregor and former boxing world champion Paulie Malignaggi has continued. Malignaggi was recently brought in as a sparring partner to help McGregor prepare for his Aug. 26 boxing match with Floyd Mayweather, but Malignaggi decided to leave Team McGregor after photos that made it look as if McGregor had knocked […]
The back-and-forth banter between Conor McGregor and former boxing world champion Paulie Malignaggi has continued.
Malignaggi was recently brought in as a sparring partner to help McGregor prepare for his Aug. 26 boxing match with Floyd Mayweather, but Malignaggi decided to leave Team McGregor after photos that made it look as if McGregor had knocked him down in sparring were leaked.
Last night (Aug. 5, 2017), Malignaggi once again took to Twitter to blast McGregor:
Yea but this coming week I’ll actually start to discuss a bit what happened Tuesday, he whimpers like a girl when he gets ripped to body lol https://t.co/lfcuILlubJ
I did that after Tues work, I suppose the ass whippin didn’t suit him so he posted dumb pics again by Thurs while skipping sparring that day https://t.co/e4TuiN1TS9
McGregor, the reigning UFC lightweight champion, will make his professional boxing debut on Aug. 26 against Mayweather in a bout that’s expected be amongst the most lucrative in the history of combat sports.
WBO Super Featherweight champion Vasyl Lomachenko has offered to spar with Conor McGregor, ahead of the UFC star’s bout against Floyd Mayweather in Nevada on Saturday, August 26.