I don’t mean to imply that Mayweather needed a fix to win. By “fixed”, I mean they wanted it to go at least a certain length and for McGregor to not take too much damage.
I do think McGregor has stamina issues. In McGregors last loss against whatshisname in MMA he was doing well until mid to late on. Then he suddenly began getting tagged like no-ones business. Some incredibly fit athletes just have a tendency to gass out. I don’t know if its physical frame, lung capacity or what, but there is something biological that adversely effects some athletes stamina wise.
I think it may have something to do with adrenalin or some other fight or flight chemical that will give you an early boost but wear you down quicker. Some of the greatest 15 round boxers around tended to be relaxed event though they were physicaly working very hard. A stressed boxer seems to tire quicker. 10 rounds boxing takes a lot of conditioning.
So just how much bigger and stronger would McGregor have to have been for this to have been a fair fight? (i.e., 50-50 chances of winning)
Every boxer has a natural pace that they want to maintain in a fight. They train for that, they have the experience of previous fights. Anything that takes them out of that pace wears them down. Punches definitely take their toll, but so does dodging punches, chasing an opponent, interruptions in the round from anything from a foul to a guy flying a parachute into the ring. Floyd is great at fighting defensively without changing his natural pace while McGregor doesn’t even have a boxing pace. And as you say, stress is part of that and goes on top of the extra energy expended. McGregor had no experience taking and dodging punches from any real boxer much less one as quick and cagey as Mayweather. His adrenal glands must have empty by round 10 (I see 2 judges scored round 9 as 10-8 for Mayweather so Mac must have looked really bad). It’s all just more of the reasons McGregor never had a chance. This is kind of an extreme comparison but it’s like sending Tiger Woods in to play tennis against the best guy in the world right now and saying he should have a chance because they both play in sports where you hit a ball with a piece of equipment.
You’re still on the strength thing. Boxing is a sport of skill. That’s what McGregor was missing, skill in punching, skill in defense, skill in timing, pacing, and knowing when to do what.
Cutting weight probably the biggest factor. Floyd’s walking around weight likely 150 but McGregor is significantly bigger. Boiling down 20 lbs or whatever is huge. Even with his real fighting this is an issue for CM.
I don’t think this was much of an issue at all. McGregor has to maintain weight in his MMA fights, too. Mayweather might walk around at 150-155 but he also works to maintain his physique like any professional athlete. There’s no way to use cutting weight as an excuse when you’ve got a 29-year-old MMA athlete in his physical prime and a very active fight schedule compared to his 40-year-old opponent who’s coming out of a 2 year lay off and only fighting his 3rd fight in the last 3-4 years.
McGregor got gassed because he while he knows how to fight in the octagon he knows relatively little about the art of boxing - and I’m saying this as an MMA fan and an admirer of McGregor’s work. An MMA fighter will use his energy and body in different ways than a boxer. But as TriPolar already mentioned, what really wore McGregor was a combination of him throwing meaningless punches and Mayweather throwing bombs that landed.
I’d say that McGregor’s fatigue was a combination of McGregor being a very mobile and busy fighter in the first round but relatively ineffective. There was very little snapping power on his punches. The moments that Mayweather appeared to be caught by McGregor were exaggerated by the media. Mayweather was never in trouble in that fight. McGregor’s now infamous ex-sparring partner was basically correct: McGregor did a lot of shit that looked impressive in edited footage, but he didn’t know how to land meaningful punches.
It looked to me like McGregor was still instinctively approaching Mayweather like another UFC opponent. If you watch McGregor’s UFC fights, he has a tendency to extend his arms and jab while moving toward his opponent. This is how he basically measures his opponent and gets his timing in sync with his spatial awareness. With 5-ounce gloves, McGregor’s and against fighters who aren’t just boxing but preparing for anything from a wrestling shoot to a spinning back kick, this is an effective striking strategy. His punches get through, he strikes with authority, and he pounces on his opponent to finish him off once he’s down.
But in the boxing ring, with bigger gloves, fighting against a world class opponent in a fight with stand-up boxing rules, that’s not going to work. Generating punching power and setting up the opponent are different in boxing than in MMA. Mayweather didn’t allow McGregor the chance to measure him. He kept knocking that lead glove back. The times that McGregor threw flurries, they were more like taps than anything meaningful.
Yes, it’s tempting to view the whole thing as theater: 49 - 0 boxer would like a final huge payday, but nothing resembling a reasonable opponent is in view. No problem - we’ll gin up a match with a popular, fit 0 - 0 boxer and hype the hell out of it. They’ll bounce around the ring for 10 rounds, then head to the bank.
Right: McGregor wasn’t remotely competitive - but he figures to wind up as the world’s second-best-paid athlete of 2017.
Great line I saw online shortly before the fight: “You think Mayweather-McGregor is going to be a big fight, just wait until my wife finds out I just spent $100 to watch it on PPV …”
While I’m sure they’re glad it did go ten, it’s worth noting that the fight went in exactly the manner many experienced observers and professionals said it would - in fact, a number of people in this thread predicted how it would go. And how it went made perfect sense.
Mayweather is (was, now?) the most technical, scoring-conscious boxer alive, if not ever. For all his swagger and noise as a promoter, once he’s in the ring he cares not a whit for showmanship; he will do whatever is required to maximize his changes of winning, and minimize his changes of losing. The most logical thing for him to do against McGregor to maximize his changes of winning the fight was exactly what he did.
That strategy happened to coincide with the best strategy to make the fight interesting and make people feel they’d gotten their money’s worth. But given Mayweather’s history I don’t believe for an instant he let McGregor stay on his feet just for the show. He boxed exactly according to maximizing his chances of victory. He always has.
I think experts predicted that Mayweather would fight defensively. However, there is a difference between fighting defensively and throwing 6 punches in round 1. At that point, you’re not fighting defensively. You’re just not fighting back.
Or you are feeling out your non-boxer opponent.
Yes. And not at all surprising against an opponent predicted to be winging hard punches early trying to end it with a quick knockout.
I find it hard to believe that one of, if not the, greatest boxers of our generation needs 3 rounds to feel out an amateur before seriously fighting back. I concede that it is possible, but it doesn’t seem likely.
This went pretty much the way I thought it would go, except, Mayweather wasn’t on his wheel as much, he wasn’t should rolling (which i found the most surprising), and he pressed the action. I was half thinking of betting McGregor goes the distance, especially after seeing the footage of Conor beating around Malignaggi, but then I saw Mayweather roller skating and I knew Mayweather is simply just going to out point him. Then, the sharp money came out and drove the odds down and I put a grand on Mayweather. Easiest bet I ever made.
Conor’s problem is that he’s conditioned for MMA and he fights too much like a MMA fighter for the squared circle. His boxing isn’t skilled enough for any dedicated boxer, much less Mayweather. I did think they stopped the fight a bit too early, even though he did nothing that last round. I would’ve scored it 10-8 and warned the corner that if he isn’t doing anything a stoppage is going to happen. Also, if I was Conor, every time Mayweather turned his back to me I would’ve cracked him in the liver, preferably with a half-choke (:)).
There was 2 minutes left in the round. If the fight isn’t stopped there, 99.999% chance that Mayweather tags him a few more times to get the KO. Enormously unlikely that McGregor makes it out of that round.
What’s the over-under on how long we wait before somebody arranges one of these stupendous spectacles between MMA and Boxing again? OMG this time we will find out which is the better “sport”! It will need to be at least a year right? Takes that long to talk enough shit about somebody to create interest.
Should anyone fall for this again? We’ve done it on MMA turf (Toney), and now on Boxing turf. The result was the same: fish out of water. The Tiger Woods/tennis analogy is apt.
The fact a guy is badly losing isn’t a reason to stop a fight. There have been some incredible comebacks in boxing history. You only stop a fight if the guy is in high danger of serious injury. McGregor hadn’t even been knocked down to that point.
Not that I’m an expert referee or anything, but it seemed a bit premature by boxing standards to me.
Not really. I’ve seen fights stopped for way less. Refs are actually well prepared to notice signs of concussion.
Not just feeling out, avoiding getting hit. McGregor was an unknown, if he had a chance it would be to get in a big punch early. On top of that Floyd wanted Mac to waste energy while conserving his own.
Pretty normal for these days. McGregor was taking solid shots and not returning anything. He was in danger of getting seriously hurt. If he had a reputation as a boxer who could come back from punishment then the ref might have waited a bit, but by all accounts that fight was getting stopped before round 10 was over no matter what. Refs are looking carefully at a boxer’s body, they can see signs of exhaustion when the body can’t hold itself up well, their torso will seem like a bobble head on their hips, there are changes in muscle tone that can be seen, I’m sure the ref took all that into account.