Mayweather Vs. McGregor

The Game Room
202

FWIW I’m a big boxing and MMA fan (more boxing), and I’ll point out I’ve seen UFC fights stopped in similar circumstances. Hell–Rousey-Nunes was stopped with Rousey having never left her feet. Rousey briefly tried to contest it, but any fan watching knew it was a good stoppage. In boxing, Andre Ward and Sergey Kovalev had a bout earlier this year–for three light heavyweight unified titles, that was stopped when Kovalev got staggered and basically was “done” on his feet, he had never been knocked down. No one seriously contested that stoppage and it was very similar to the McGregor stoppage.

There’s been lots of boxing bouts stopped in which the loser never left their feet. People die in boxing rings. My understanding is only 5 MMA deaths have been recorded in “sanctioned” MMA fights, none in the UFC (all were in minor promotions.)

There’s a lot of data on boxing deaths (link), and while boxing was far worse in the past it’s still a deadly, deadly sport even in the 2000s and 2010s.

Part of what made boxing so deadly in the past was the desire by fans and the refs to “let a fighter finish”, so you’d see guys not only knocked down once, but 4-5 times in a round and allowed to keep going. Tremendous, tremendous damage can be done to a person in a situation like that. And the reality is if you’re being manhandled that way and you, for whatever reason, can still stagger to your feet, it’s almost unheard of you go on to win the bout. So there’s a lot of good reasons to just stop fights like that.

The reality is the ref has the power, and the responsibility, to stop a fight when he determines one of the fighters can’t properly defend himself. The reason for not ending a fight anytime someone gets knocked down is that some knock downs are really just that–the guy is knocked down but still has legitimate fight left in him. But it can also be true that a guy is still on his feet, having never been knocked down, but have no fight left.

If Connor had the ability and wanted to stay in that fight he needed to have kept counter punching, needed to have shown some ability to dodge/defend punches, needed to not start basically blocking with his face, should’ve tried to wrap Mayweather up etc. The fact he did none of those things is strong evidence he was in trouble, I’ve watched tons of boxing and you could see his legs were gone, you could see his hands too far down etc. He was in in trouble and wasn’t effectively defending himself–textbook scenario for a stoppage w/someone still standing.

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Both assertions in the last sentence are incorrect.

Firstly, it was a controversial decision in its own right. Partly because Ward seemed to end it with a flurry of low blows, but there were also those who felt it should have gone on.

But beyond that, it wasn’t very similar to the McGregor stoppage. Unlike McGregor, Kovalev was immobilized, hobbled over in place and just absorbing punch after punch. (Possibly this was due to the low blows.)

[OTOH, as I observed earlier, it was pretty clear that McGregor was going to lose by that point. Kovalev was very much in the fight at the point that fight was stopped. Which is why the McGregor ending was not one of the “controversial” stoppages, unlike the Ward-Kovalev one which was.]

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Good example, although Kovalev was rocked by a really hard punch from a hard puncher. Of course he complained but I consider it a good stoppage.

Very good points. It has been slow progress but in the past 30 years or so the safety of boxers has become more important. Now MMA has to face this issue as well. The tough part is that the damage isn’t always obvious during the fight, it’s a dangerous sport but there’s no reason to continue fights just on the outside chance of a comeback by a fighter in serious trouble.

I’m sure the ref was taking those factors into consideration. It should be growing criteria, it’s a boxer’s job to avoid punches and fight back, if they aren’t doing that I don’t see anything wrong with stopping a fight. If McGregor had been an experienced boxer with a reputation for surviving the circumstances the ref might have given him more leeway. If he McGregor didn’t realize that it’s just another sign of his lack of experience.

But I still have to see the fight to give a final opinion on this. I don’t see him getting cheated by that decision, but it’s possible I may not agree with it in the full context.

205

Jesus dude, you should never be a boxing ref. Kovalev literally fell into the ropes after it was stopped. He was done. He may have taken a low blow or not, it’s very hard to tell in situations like that, but that’s an unavoidable aspect of boxing.

206

Not to worry. I will never be a boxing ref.

I agree about Kovalev’s position when the fight was stopped. That’s why it was dissimilar to the McGregor stoppage, as I noted.

However, the question is whether he could have been given a standing eight or something, especially if he was temporarily incapacitated from a low blow (in which case he should have been given even more time to recover). Within a few seconds of the fight being waved off he was up and about - it’s not like he collapsed altogether.

That said, I didn’t say I personally thought the fight shouldn’t have been stopped. Only that - contrary to your claim - it was a controversial decision, with people contesting the ending on both grounds. (See e.g. Ward vs Kovalev II: Paulie Malignaggi questions timing of Andre Ward's stoppage win over Sergey Kovalev | Boxing News | Sky Sports)

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Difficult to tell if Kovalev was hit totally below the belt, but I will say he was more clearly injured than McGregor and he took some really hard shots to the head before the body punching that ended it. But he was punching back until just before that onslaught. It was a good stoppage.

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No two fights are going to be identical–I believe what you originally asked is could someone name a fight where the loser was stopped and had never been knocked down, in an important fight. World light heavyweight title rematch between two experienced and seasoned fighters, within this calendar year, easily qualifies.

I’ll repeat also the Rousey-Nunez fight, stoppages like this happen in UFC too.

I think there’s a small minority of fans who want the fights to be like the Rocky movies, but I don’t think the Rousey stoppage or the Kovalev stoppage were meaningfully controversial. Controversial among the crowd who think a fight should go until someone is dead, sure, but they’re (hopefully) a minority of serious fans. Likewise the stoppage in McGregor-Mayweather isn’t controversial by most of the combat sport talking heads.

210

Your belief is incorrect. You could easily look this up, but I’ll spare you the trouble (emphasis added):

I reiterated this again in post #197. Perhaps you somehow missed it both times.

211

  1. Rousey wasn’t “on the ropes”, since there are no ropes in UFC. She was still moving and had some minimal level of defensive moves left she was taking. She had no more visible injuries than Connor (she had facial bruising, which McGregor certainly had as well.)

  2. Kovalev was still showing more fight than Connor was when it was stopped, he did fall into the ropes after. He did not have any visible cuts or serious injuries, and he wasn’t holding onto the ropes or etc.

So the two fights I’ve mentioned are still very comparable.

212

Not to mention you basically must not have watched the actual McGregor-Mayweather fight, because you’re asking for us to find fights that were stopped under criteria dissimilar from this one.

If you actually rewatch Round 10, by the fight clock:

2:15 - McGregor takes an unprotected head shot and is pushed into the corner by Mayweather, gloves are down.
2:10 - Over the intervening 5 seconds Mayweather beats him from that corner towards the other one and he takes 5 more punches to the head, all with his gloves in poor position to defend himself and with him moving poorly. The 5th punch is significant and staggers him, he falls backwards and grabs onto Mayweather to avoid falling down.
2:05 - Takes another hard punch and staggers, again he still hasn’t shown any defense, no counterpunches or etc for some time now.
2:03 - He takes more hits with again, his gloves down, rocks back into the ropes but comes back off.
2:00 - Takes yet another significant punch to the head, actually staggers into the ropes then comes off them again.
1:59 - He takes another hard punch and staggers, as the ref comes over to stop the fight.

During this time he has held onto Mayweather once to avoid falling, rocked off the ropes three or four times, he’s had his hands down the whole time. More importantly if you’ve ever watched McGregor fight or even just watched anyone fight–look at his face, look at his reaction. He’s not tired. He’s not there, he’s in a bad place where bad things can happen. He seems genuinely disoriented and confused. In his words he was just tired. But a ref is committing a pretty grave error to look at a fighter that is visibly confused and not mentally cognizant of the fight in a meaningful way and to allow that fighter to continue taking blows to the head.

So Connor was injured–he was dazed from being hit in the head, and he wasn’t really moving around the ring, he was literally being knocked around the ring at will by Mayweather. His response to being up on the ropes and being punched repeatedly was to…keep his gloves down and stagger around.

Nothing to really discuss here, it was a good stoppage and you’re wrong if you think otherwise.

213

Also FWIW, Robert Byrd told Connor in the locker room that if he gave him signs he wasn’t able to defend himself he would get him out of the fight. So Connor knew, or should have known, he wasn’t going to be afforded a 20-30 second period where he’s unable to defend himself at all.

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You can’t really tell from that photo where the punch landed and if it was below his navel. A boxer has to be ready to take some belt line shots and can’t be complaining if he’s stopped as a result of multiple legal body shots and shots to the head if one punch is maybe slightly low.

215

This is very important. If he was given that specific instruction then McGregor has nothing to complain about. He wanted to be a boxer, that’s part of the game.

216

McGregor has a (probably well-deserved) reputation as a tough guy. Is he going to publicly state, “Good thing they ended the fight, I might have been really hurt!” Of course not, he’s going to insist he could have taken more. As it was, his complaints in his post-fight interviews seemed pretty mild, he certainly didn’t imply that it was unfair or anything. He just said he felt he might have rebounded as he’s done in a few MMA fights. (Which I think was BS, he was done.)

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Certainly. As I mentioned before there are always complaints after a stoppage. Sometimes the boxer will admit it was fair but his cornermen will still complain. There is almost always an excuse when a boxer loses a fight, it was stopped too soon, i didn’t get to train, they didn’t use the gloves i wanted, the referee was breaking too much, something happened to my back, my legs, my eyes, etc. It’s all part of the game.

218

More often it’s the other way around. The fighter wants to continue but the cornermen think it’s better to let him live to fight another day.

There’s no disgrace in having your corner throw in the towel as there is if you do it. Though I believe Frazier always resented his corner throwing in the towel against Ali and believed he would have won had they not done it.

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Since Ali said he didn’t know if he could continue himself I can understand his resentment. But they did what was best for him, and the problem is when corners don’t share the same sensibility. We can’t expect a professional boxer to know when to quit but his corner should know when it’s time and act appropriately. That has improved in recent years but still a problem. I just don’t consider the remote possibility of a comeback as good reason to continue a fight. It’s hard to make the call, but look at Ali-Frazier 3 and you won’t find that Frazier lost anyone’s respect because he didn’t finish. If anything it increased his legendary status. I think we may have discussed this before, Frazier’s whole reputation is based on his three fights against Ali, great performances each time. I feel for the boxer who is willing to end up brain damaged or dead to win a fight, but boxing will disappear as a legitimate sport if that keeps happening.

220

I don’t think anyone thinks of Frazier as a quitter (especially since it was his corner who threw in the towel, not him).

But had Frazier won two of three against Ali rather than losing two of three, the two fighters would be looked at very differently, relative to each other. That was Frazier’s issue. (IIRC you yourself were recently arguing that Frazier was not that great a fighter, and it would be much harder to make that argument had he beaten Ali two out of three.)

221

Now I’ve seen the fight. It was a legitimate stoppage. McGregor was rocked by three straight punches to the head, he didn’t defend against them, he didn’t punch pack. He was off balance, reeling, needing the ropes to stay up. He had lost muscle tone, his head wasn’t resisting or turning away the punches, his hands were down. He was defenseless.

McGregor is no boxer. His best punches had little effect, and that was just a handful of punches, the vast majority of them were no more than touches, thrown from outside, no leverage or weight behind them. His only skill was staying at a safe range for an outside fight and defensive footwork. He is likely to lose to any boxing champion or top ten contender without a lot more training.

Mayweather looked like a retired champion. He was there, but he was slow. He had no power left in his punches, the defensive reflexes were there but he wasn’t able to set up McGregor to deliver power. Part of that was McGregor’s movement, but part of it was a slower Mayweather unable to maneuver and having trouble pulling the trigger. He was also getting tired even though he fought a slow fight and much of that should be credited to McGregor who kept moving and didn’t allow Floyd to stand still and wiggle away punches, so Floyd had to keep moving himself. It’s a good thing he retired or he’d be losing to a legitimate contender now.