Not a Mayweather fan, I always go for the underdog of sorts. Floyd’s pomposity is enough for me to despise him. I can only hope he gets knocked on his ass to see what kind of shit show crying “unfair” ensues, it’ll probably be more entertaining than the fight itself.
Mayweather would knock’s out McGregor in round 3
The only way McGregor wins is with a hay-maker early in the fight. Maybe Mayweather gets cocky and lets his guard down at some point, but short of that, this fight could turn out to be the boxing equivalent of James Tony vs. Randy Couture, which is kinda sad because it seems like that’s all people remember Toney for now and tend to forget his remarkable run in boxing. I hope this isn’t the start of a decline for McGregor’s MMA career.
Both adaher and asahi have basically summed it up; McGregor could win if he gets lucky and Mayweather makes a terrible error and gets absolutely floored by a heavy punch. It’s not impossible… but the odds are probably a hundred to one. Unless this fight is fixed I’m taking Mayweather at any reasonable odds.
Boxing is not just fighting. Boxing is a martial art, a very technically complex one, and the people at the top of the sport - especially in the lower weight classes where it’s more difficult to knock someone out with a single punch - make extremely few unforced errors. Floyd Mayweather is as technically proficient a boxer as has ever lived, but any top level champion would be an enormous challenge for Conor McGregor.
I mean, it’s not like Conor McGregor doesn’t know how to box. He does, but we’re talking about jack of all trades versus a master of none; McGregor’s boxing skills are in the top one percent of one percent, but that still puts him at a hopeless disadvantage to Mayweather, who IS the guy at the top. The difference here is basically like comparing Usain Bolt to Ashton Eaton, the world’s best decathlete. Ashton Eaton is INCREDIBLY fast; if you saw him run a 100m, your jaw would drop at the man’s speed. He’s faster than fast, in the top one percent of one percent. Most men could never run that fast if they made training to run fast their full time jobs. But he’d lose to Bolt, and lose badly. Indeed, Eaton, were he to compete in the 100m event itself, would not make the final, much less win. Super fast is not good enough.
McGregor is the Ashton Eaton here. He’s doomed. You cannot beat the world’s best boxer by… well, unless you become the world’s greatest boxer, or unless he doesn’t put his all into the fight.
If they fought MMA style, McGregor would eat him alive, just as I would expect Ashton Eaton to utterly humiliate Usain Bolt in a decathlon.
Besides for a puncher’s chance, there’s also the age factor. Mayweather is about 40 and hasn’t fought in 2 years. It’s very likely that he’s declined over the past two years, and there’s no way to know to what extent that might have been.
I have some unorganized thoughts that I felt I should blurt out…
I’m surprised this fight is even happening. I blame/praise the promoters. This won’t be a good fight to watch, unless Mayweather gets KO’d. As stated before, Mayweather will fight his fight, super defensive, running away, pitty-patter punching (just hard enough for judges to take notice). Also, as stated before, Mayweather’s style is very difficult to overcome and the only one that has gotten close (recently) is Maidana, but it looks like Mayweather figured out a defense to his tactic. (Mosley should’ve finished him off and De La Hoya clearly won).
I agree that McGregor’s only chance is to swarm early and all around him, not just directly at him. He will need to get on his wheels and find angles, opposite of whatever Mayweather’s chin-down shoulder rolling technique. Mayweather typically shoulders rolls left, so McGregor has to time right body shots or get in place to cross right down the pipe, a difficult proposition even for someone like Lomachenko/Pacquiao (Prime) (who I think could pull it off, albeit with difficulty). That should open up Mayweather. If he does KO, it will be like what he did to Jose Aldo, KO via trade. McGregor is quick enough to trade punches with Mayweather, it’s the effectiveness of the trade that is in question. Additionally, Mayweather would have to make the calculation that the crowd wants to see him box against McGregor and therefore take the offensive. Then, that’s where Conor will have to time things correctly, more so than vs Aldo. One, because Mayweather is Mayweather, he’ll naturally do something to lessen the impact, and two, there’s more padding in boxing gloves. Conor may have way more power, but Mayweather’s defense specializes in dampening opposing power.
Most likely, what I see happening is Mayweather’ style prevailing, even if the conditions are right for McGregor. McGregor is not experienced enough as a boxer to take advantage. Mayweather will not open up to a charging anyone, let alone McGregor. A couple of 1-2 combos to counter the rush will be enough to slow down Conor. This will repeat the entire 12 rounds. If Mayweather even tastes Conor’s power, he’s smart enough to not and try to match it. He’ll throw one or two punch counters and run away. Unanimous Decision for Floyd.
This is the unknown factor. It’s happened to plenty of boxers in the past, even without a 2 year layoff. The difference though is that modern boxers stay in good condition throughout their careers, instead letting themselves go until a few weeks before a fight. As long as Floyd has continued to work out and maintain his physical condition he won’t be surprised by a change in his physical condition, he’ll be aware of it and compensate. McG’s best chance of taking advantage of Mayweather’s age will be to maintain a non-stop pace throughout the fight that doesn’t allow Floyd to mount much offense at all. He would have to avoid any mistakes that Floyd can take advantage of, but Floyd nearly lost his first fight with Marcos Maidana by being out-hustled. Some say he should have lost that fight. But McGregor has never fought a 12 round boxing match, he doesn’t have experience pacing himself in that way, if he attempts this strategy he’s like to fade at some point, and Mayweather will take advantage of that. McGregor will also have a hard time with the judges who tend to favor Mayweather’s technical skills, McGregor will seem clumsy to them, they won’t give him credit for anything but indisputable effectiveness of his punching, something difficult to achieve against Mayweather.
It’s not impossible for Mayweather to lose, nowhere near it. Nobody expected Ronda Rousey to be knocked off her pedestal, nobody expected Buster Douglas to knock out Mike Tyson, it can happen, but there’s very little reason to expect an upset in this fight.
The fight is largely occurring because so many people want to see the upset, not because it makes sense. Boxing purists are upset about this, but Floyd is no longer a champion, and McGregor is a credible fighter even if he wouldn’t be considered a number one contender for an actual title.
Fanmade trailer is awesome [some NSFW language].
Mayweather’s fights are pretty much boring. He is a technical tactician in the ring. He boxes defensively and scores points along the way. Only about half of his victories are from KO’s. It will be very difficult for McGregor to win.
Although the trash talking over the past couple of days has been very entertaining.
One interesting twist which Mayweather would never agree to would be for the first 8 rounds to be standard boxing rules. If there is no KO after 8 rounds, then the bout switches to MMA rules. This would force Mayweather to try and knock McGregor out early. Because if it got to the 9th round, it would be over for Mayweather.
FWIW my understanding is there’s literally a stipulation in the contract that 100% of McGregor’s purse is forfeited to Mayweather if he does this. He’s set to make more than he has in his entire life combined and multiplied several times over, he’s not going to throw that away to get the fans cheering his name.
Few thoughts I have:
- Saying Mayweather isn’t used to getting hit as hard as McGregor can hit is basically not correct, especially saying it’s because Mayweather is used to fighting people wearing “pillows.” This actually shows a misunderstanding of the glove and the mechanics involved. Light gloves like they use in UFC actually lead to fighters hitting with less power, the big gloves used in boxing add a dramatic level of protection to the puncher’s hands, allowing them to throw punches far harder than they safely could with bare knuckle or with light gloves. While the heavy gloves of boxing have traditionally been seen as an improvement over bare knuckle because they prevent excessive cuts (boxers often get cut, but if you’ve ever read about old bare knuckle boxing or seen “real” bare knuckle boxing–it’s legal/sanctioned in a couple countries, that sport is often a complete blood bath); unknown until more modern times is the heavy boxing glove actually is probably more dangerous to the combatant. Because it allows heavier concussive blows to be thrown, it leads to more serious impacts on the brain when you get punched. Not that MMA can’t bust up the old brain right good too, but boxers simply hit harder than MMA fighters as a rule.
Most MMA situations actually aren’t amenable to strong punches being thrown and landed. It’s also erroneous when someone said Floyd hasn’t taken someone’s full force because he’s never been beat on from a mounted position. You actually can’t punch nearly as hard while in full mount as you can on your two feet. A proper boxer’s power punch comes from the legs and back, and you cannot activate much of your leg muscles in full mount. Watch YouTube videos of Foreman link (probably the hardest puncher of all time) working a heavy bag or someone’s face, his big power punches are from his ability to use his powerful leg and back muscles and move his considerable body mass into momentum behind his punches–it ain’t because of George’s arm muscles (which is about all you get when beating on someone mounted.) MMA fighters who win fights by stoppage or KO when in full mount beating on someone just rely on the fact that position allows you to punch someone repeatedly and they can’t easily defend themselves, which if the person can’t get out of it and takes enough hits to the head they can get dazed, and MMA refs stop a fight instantly (sometimes when fans think they shouldn’t) if they think the guy is “out” and can’t defend himself.
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Mayweather’s entire style is about making it impossible for overly aggressive fighters to ever get that lucky shot, it makes him damn near impossible to KO. When he’s removed the realistic shot of a KO from his opponent, it just becomes a technical boxing fight, and in that realm he’s the best counter puncher ever, and one of the top all around technical boxers (probably top 4-5) all time. It’s true the only times Floyd has ever really looked in trouble has been when he’s either been tired or made a mistake and a guy with real KO power has come close to being able to catch him–close, but never quite.
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Mayweather also intimately understands boxing scoring; an earlier poster said Oscar de la Hoya actually beat Mayweather–a common complaint from bar stools around America after that fight was over. That fight was a clear Mayweather win, the big controversy of that fight for me was the split decision, Mayweather clearly won it in dominating fashion. Why the dissonance? If you watched the fight live Oscar had some bouts of tremendous attempted offense, and the crowd went wild. Casual observers were like “wow Floyd is getting his ass whipped, finally!” But the trained eye noted that it was a whole lot of sound and fury, during those moments Oscar was wild and aggressive but was not landing effective punches and thus on the score cards all that crowd pleasing antic wasn’t actually earning him points, if anything Floyd easily defending it all and getting in occasional counterpunches was earning him points.
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At the end of the day, Mayweather has never once in his career cared about putting on a “good fight” that pleases the crowd. He fights his way and he’s always won doing that. He won’t do anything out of bounds to beat McGregor, about the only way I see it is if McGregor ends up being so tremendously bad at boxing that Mayweather feels he can just land major blow after major blow “at will”, if that happens Mayweather is likely to get a KO. Part of never having been KO’d is having a strong chin, but part of it is avoiding knock out punches, if McGregor cannot do that in a boxing context the fact Mayweather doesn’t have “power” won’t matter, he’s still a professional boxer, I guarantee he throws harder punches than any of you’ve ever imagined being hit with, nobody who cannot defend themselves can take those over and over without being knocked out. I’m not saying McGregor won’t be able to defend himself in a boxing context, I’m saying if that ends up being the case Mayweather may decide to put him to bed early. If not, he’s going to fight his fight–it will be boring and you’ll regret you paid money for it.
Good analysis Martin, I tend to agree.
I liked the link to Foreman training, You can see the anguish on his trainer’s face when he steadies the heavy bag for him. He’s feeling the force of those punches through the bulk of the bag and it is still too much for him (and George looks to be barely trying but he is well balanced and those shots come right up through the legs hips and back.)
Foreman was an incredible puncher. Legs like oak trees, wide hips that he turned into the punch. He could knock out a horse Mongo style.
Excellent analysis, Martin. All points you made were spot on, especially the oft-overlooked part about boxing gloves and the concussive damage they can inflict. Years back my mother occasionally walked in on me watching MMA and used to talk about how brutal it is and I remarked that MMA is actually significantly safer for the reasons you pointed out, and also the fact that once the fight is over in MMA, it’s over - they don’t make you stand up and take more punishment. Both are dangerous but more boxers die in the ring than MMA fighters.
I clipped your post and focused on that last point because I think that’s really where the pivot point is.
What I suspect is that McGregor knows his chances of winning a boxing match are 1 million to 1. That’s why I suspect McGregor’s game plan isn’t straight up boxing; it might be a hybridized form of MMA-style dirty boxing that gets adapted for boxing rules. Lots of holding and hitting, including some illegal shots here and there. McGregor will probably try to play with the rules in this one and he probably doesn’t give a shit if he gets point deductions for it – he just wants to frustrate Floyd and beat him up. Even if he loses on points, which is a very likely outcome, he could convince himself and his MMA fanbase that he succeeded in roughing up boxing’s megastar and claimed a moral victory of sorts.
However, as I mentioned in a previous post, what McGregor may find out is that getting a fighter - especially an outstanding one like Mayweather - in a clinch isn’t as easy as it looks. If he tries to get in a wrestle Floyd up against the ropes, he might possibly make it work a time or two before Mayweather realizes what’s up and starts countering with some combinations as he comes in. And as you pointed out, Mayweather is an extremely effective counter puncher. If McGregor has any chance at all to win he’ll probably have to hope he can confuse and frustrate Mayweather by being an unconventional and unusually rough opponent and somehow lands the shot that wobbles Mayweather and takes him out. But the odds are against it. It’s far more likely that Mayweather simply figures out the timing and starts piling up the punches. It wouldn’t surprise me to all-time lopsided compu-box data toward the end of the fight, with Mayweather landing 5-10 shots to McGregor’s 1 (or worse). As you say, even guys with the toughest of chins will have a hard time standing up to that kind of ass-whipping.
Foreman was a physical freak of nature. In his prime, he was arguably among the most feared fighters in the business. I’ve watched highlights of his fights with Frazier and God, the thunderous power of his punches is extraordinary. Ken Norton and Ernie Shavers were pretty bad-ass too for what it’s worth.
But man, Foreman had heavy, heavy hands too. Just sledgehammers. One of the few guys that could really hurt someone with a single jab. Larry Holmes in his prime was another, but whereas Holmes would really snap his punch and put his entire whole body into it almost, with Foreman it almost looked like he wasn’t really putting much effort into it at all. What looked like a paw to the face just to set up some distance could actually cause real momentary brain damage.
I don’t think he’ll get DQ’d or anything, but I wouldn’t at all be surprised to see him try to dirty box and live with a warning or even a deduction or two. He might not even have to do anything that goes too far over the line. All of that will probably go down in the first round or two before it becomes a real boxing match. But I agree that anything outrageous is out – he might use whatever he feels is an advantage to win a fight but McGregor doesn’t want to just show up and cop out. He might be deluded but he clearly is taking his chances seriously.
MacGregor is making a to of money from this fight. He’ll go out of his way to avoid a DQ and I think he doesn’t care as much about winning as raking in the cash. At the end of Floyd’s fight with Pacquiao the Pacman said “Thank you” to him. He was fighting for the money that time, not the honor. It’s happened plenty of times in boxing. I wouldn’t be surprised if Mac gives up at some point because he’s got no chance and taking a beating in the later rounds. He won’t care, he’s not so delusional he doesn’t realize the risk he’s taking, losing is already in his mind, and that would be a significant disadvantage if he had a chance to begin with, but he doesn’t.
Of course I had to eat my words about Rhonda Rousey, you never know what’s going to happen in boxing. Pacquiao himself just lost a fight to a nobody in Australia.
asahi, Foreman represents a certain ideal in punching power, his body is so big and strong all over it doesn’t absorb much of the power of his punches. Other boxers are a little closer to throwing a rock at their opponents, with enough speed the rock is damaging but it also will bounce off absorbing some of the force on impact. Foreman more like a log splitter, it’s not the speed or the weight behind the punch, his fist just keeps moving forward unhindered by the result of the impact on his body, unable to be withstood by his opponent’s body. He can knock anyone out with a punch that moves only an inch. Indeed a freak of nature, even in the modern world of super-heavyweights I haven’t seen anyone else ever hit like that, nobody else ever built like that at his size.
I assume that God still won in a decision?
There’s decent anecdotal evidence Foreman was an incongruous freak. I’ve seen Evander Holyfield say in multiple interviews the hardest he’s ever been hit is by George Foreman, and he fought George when he was 20 years removed from his prime.
Holyfield has carefully said he’s not claiming George is the hardest hitter he’s ever fought, because he prefaces that in other fights with famous hitters like Mike Tyson, Tyson never really got a good hit on him, George caught Holyfield with one of his big blows in the 7th round of their fight and Holyfield has said it was the hardest punch he’s felt in his career. He actually says when he went back to his corner he asked if all of his teeth had been knocked out.
George is also underrated as a boxer, no one would claim he’s the best heavyweight of all time but he’s definitely one of the best. A lot of people thought George was just a big slow, lumbering brute but he actually was a good ring tactician and usually fought a pretty deliberate, thought out fight. He was amazingly good at making his opponents take two steps for every one of his, and at cutting off the ring, and most people that end up with nowhere to move against George ended up in a real bad way. 68 of his 76 wins came via KO, which is just pretty insane.
When he fought Ali he was 40-0 with all but 3 coming via knockout, which makes Ali’s win pretty impressive. I’ve always liked George’s comments on the fight, he said at one point he caught Ali with a massive blow, and Ali simply asked him “Is that the best you got George?” In his words, he thought to himself, “yeah, that’s pretty much it” and he says he was mentally defeated/deflated instantly. He said up to that point in his career he’d always just been able to rely on how hard he could punch and had supreme confidence in it, and Ali’s words undid that in an instant.
If God had a contract clause like MacGregor’s where he’d lose the match and the prize for using supernatural powers then I’d put my money on Foreman.