Floyd Mayweather could have finished Conor McGregor in first round “If I wanted to”
Apparently, Floyd Mayweather didn’t train particularly seriously ahead of his 2017 boxing bout with Conor McGregor. It became the highest selling boxing pay-per-view of all time, and it was huge for both fighters, as well as both martial arts disciplines. McGregor opened strongly, putting a lot of pressure on his opponent and even winning some of the first few rounds. Mayweather slowly out it on the Irishman though, eventually winning via 10th round TKO.
If you ask Mayweather, that was all due to entertainment value. In a recent interview Mayweather said that he easily could have finished McGregor early. He elected not to do so, however, to purposely let the fight go longer and raise the odds of a potential rematch.
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”You know, for the Conor McGregor fight, I didn’t really train,” he told REVOLT TV. “All I did was just push-ups and sit-ups. That’s all I did, push-ups and sit-ups. Boxed a few times, hit the bag a few times. ‘Cos actually, training camp was in different places. I would do a training camp in Vegas a few days. Sometimes I wouldn’t go to the gym for a week.
”I took it serious, but like I said before, I wanted to have some fun in the fight,” He added. “I wanted to entertain the people. So you know, just lead with that style that I had which was entertaining, it was fun, so that the people enjoyed it. So you have to give people a show, so I gave people a show. If I wanted to go out and f**k him up and blaze him right out the gate, I could have did that. But you know, my thing is if I would have did that, there probably wouldn’t be a part two.”
”Go back and look at All Access,” Mayweather concluded. “I was in shape, but I wasn’t probably in shape like the Arturo Gatti fight. I was in dog shape. Diego Corrales, I was in dog shape. I was running in the mountains.”
As of now Mayweather has undisclosed plans with UFC president Dana White. Nothing official has been announced, more than that they are working on a “spectacular event” this year. He doesn’t have a fight booked at the moment, but collaboration with Zuffa Boxing seems to be on the way.
McGregor, however, has more or less been promised the next title shot at lightweight. This was said by White after McGregor’s triumphant return to the octagon at UFC 246. At that event the Irish superstar TKO’d Donald “Cowboy” Cerrone in just 40 seconds.
