Interestingly, enough Mayweather tried to bet the under (9.5 rounds) in the fight, and when he failed he just gave the money to a friend to bet. And the fight was called…one minute into the 10th round.
I don’t know that I agree. I’ve seen fights stopped without a knockdown, but those are cases where the loser is just standing there and taking a pounding. At the time the fight was stopped McGregor was moving around the ring, taking a hit here and there. He was clearly tired and having a hard time doing much at that time. But it’s not like he was just propped up against the ropes all glassy-eyed either.
What I read from sports reporters who observed the fight was that Conor was “falling through the ropes”. I watched and rewatched that 10th round and maybe my inexperienced eye couldn’t notice with the camera moving fast and at various angles but I didn’t see it. But if it’s true, maybe that was what led the ref to call the fight at that point.
Whenever there’s a TKO the fighter will say it’s too soon. I only heard minor complaints from McGregor, and observers at best said the ref could have let him get a couple of more times before stopping it. There have been terrible TKO decisions by refs in the past, this one doesn’t compare to those.
I agree it’s not one of the terrible ref decisions. But only because the outcome was pretty much assured anyway. McGregor was obviously weakened, and the fight had been steadily tipping in Mayweather’s favor since the early rounds.
But had the fight been close, and the action in the 10th round just been a bad round for McGregor, then it would have been a terrible decision (in my semi-informed decision).
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The most notorious situation was probably in Chavez vs. Taylor, stopped with just 2 seconds left in the final round. Depending on how the final round would have been scored if the fight continued Taylor would have won on the cards.
The worst stoppage I ever saw was Dokes vs. Weaver. This fight occurred shortly after the death of Duk Koo Kim following a fight and the boxing world was on edge. In the first round Weaver was knocked down, stood up, the fight continued for a few seconds, and then without even looking at Weaver the ref stopped the fight.
Saturday’s stoppage was not at all unusual.
I think that’s a fair assessment. The referee really need to be considering three questions:
- Is the fighter capable of defending himself?
- Is the fighter in danger of serious injury?
- Could the fighter recover and win?
Obviously I am disregarding automatic stoppages (failing to rise after 10 seconds, failing to answer the bell) or the doctor ordering a stoppage.
The extent to which these things matter depend on one another to some extent. If it’s a close affair, and the fighter has a chance to recover and possibly win the match, I’d agree being knocked down or requiring a standing 8 is usually insufficient to merit a stoppage. If however the affair appears to be decided, there is no point allowing things to go on, and the affair was clearly decided. McGregor looked completely beaten at the end of the ninth, and at about 40 seconds into the 10th, he looked incapable of defense; he couldn’t hold his hands up, and his head was drifting away from Mayweather. It was time to end it.
The Chavez-Taylor fight was a completely different situation.
Taylor was beaten to the point that he had no idea what planet he was on. The sole objection to stopping the fight was that since there were only a few seconds left (officially 2, but actually a few more if you watch the film) he could have made it to the bell without further damage and won the fight on points (since he had otherwise dominated throughout).
That has no connection to this situation.
I’ve not seen Dokes-Weaver.
I’m not equating the two. I’m pointing out well known controversial stoppages. This one is not controversial. It is not an unusual stoppage. This wasn’t even a real title fight, McGregor was unable to avoid punches, he was winded, any one punch could badly hurt him. Many title fights have been stopped in the same way. There were always some who thought those stoppages came too soon but the only effect that had on the officiating in Nevada and most of the world has been to stop fights sooner.
Those are three good criteria. I’m not sure how you meant them to be applied but it only takes one of them to stop a fight. The third one is a little hazy depending on what you mean by ‘recover’. Just the clips I’ve seen from the ending of the fight don’t show McGregor recovering, they show him getting hit more, unable to block punches or hit back. McGregor’s family and friends should be very happy that the fight was stopped at that point.
I just watched the end of Chavez Taylor and it’s a totally different situation. Taylor was knocked down and the ref gave him his 10 count. Taylor failed to respond to the ref yelling “Are you OK” and was steadying himself on the ropes. He was KOed and that’s different from a stoppage.
Can you give an example of a major fight stopped in such circumstances?
Specifically where the loser had never been knocked down, was moving around the ring rather than just propped up against the ropes absorbing blow after blow, and had no visible cuts/injuries.
I don’t recall any.
It’s a combination of all three. I mean, a boxer in the ring against a professional boxer is always, in a sense, “in danger of injury.” But if he is fighting and capable of defending himself, so is the other guy. The question is how likely further injury is and whether there’s any point in risking it.
At the start of Round 10, McGregor is exhausted, but he’s on his feet and he’s trying his best. But between 2:15 and 2:10, Mayweather hits him several times, and McGregor’s condition becomes visibly a lot worse. There’s a brief clinch at 2:09, and at 2:05 Mayweather hits him again and he staggers back and is visibly in trouble. By 1:59 he is struggling to maintain a stance against Mayweather. It didn’t need to go past that. I don’t think McGregor would have died or anything in the next 15 seconds but the best he could have hoped for was a relatively soft landing. At that point,
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McGregor could not possibly have won, as he was not strong enough to throw a punch that would knock a person out,
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He was not able to adequately defend himself, and
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He was visibly not completely in command of his senses, and was in some danger of being unnecessarily injured very badly.
So, on balance, stopping it was justified.
I don’t know anything about boxing, but how far down in the boxing ranks would you have to go before McGregor has a greater than 50% chance of winning? The 2nd ranked boxer? 10th? 100th?
Haven’t watched a lot of boxing lately, but based on what I’ve seen of the top fights over the last couple of year…mid-teens. By 20 or so, McGregor becomes the low-payout favorite. Boxing is not what it was and the drop-off is getting steeper by the year. Back in the 80’s-90’s, anybody in the top 50 in his weight class would school him.
I think you’d have to drop well below the top 100. Most ranked boxers would likely have knocked McGregor out earlier.
It was his first professional boxing match and his technique is terribly flawed. I think he COULD beat the #60 guy, but it would not be likely.
I will need some time to search for such a thing, but your criteria is flawed, this is not a major fight, it’s a stunt, a non-title fight where the loser was in his first professional boxing match.
Again, I haven’t seen the fight, if I see the whole thing I might think differently, but your description doesn’t match the reports or RickJay’s analysis. He appears to have been in serious trouble when the fight was stopped, taking punches, not simply moving around the ring but reeling and unable to defend himself.
The “major fight” criteria is primarily about limiting things to a smaller universe. I’m not saying this stoppage was unprecedented in the entire history of boxing, only that it was unusual. It would be pointless to come up with a few examples out of the entire universe of all boxing matches which have ever been filmed.
I don’t see any contradiction between what I described and reports or RickJay’s analysis. McGregor was getting the worst of the exchanges, but he wasn’t just standing there getting pounded either.
An example of a non-knockdown TKO that’s fairly common would be the end of the Morrison-Ruddock fight (Ruddock had been knocked down earlier in the round, but the fight was stopped later). Compare that to the end of this fight. It’s not the same thing at all.
I’m going to wait until I see the whole fight, or at least the whole 10th round to comment further. I can’t really say what happened from just the last few seconds, I could be way off here. I have been taking into account that two judges scored round 9 as 10-8 for Mayweather, a practice I don’t like when there’s no knockdown, but an indication that McGregor had already taken a lot of punishment. Maybe those scores were unfair, they often are because it’s rare for a fighter to be beaten badly enough to have an extra point taken away when they have stayed on their feet.
Yup, and “power punching” in boxing isn’t just a matter of physical strength. It’s sort of like hitting a home run in baseball, absolute physical strength is indeed part of it, but it’s just part of it. For example a professional powerlifter who has never thrown a punch in his life would likely take years to develop a knock out punch as good as even a boxer like Mayweather–who isn’t known for knock out punches. A knockout punch is as much about being able to land a punch in a specific way as it is about the force you can put behind it.