Malignaggi says he asked McGregor to stop photos and he laughed

Boxingnews24.com

By Jeff Aranow: Paulie Malignaggi had a conversation with UFC champ Conor McGregor after their second sparring session, asking him to have his people stop with the photos of their sparring sessions, and he says he was laughed at in response. Malignaggi says he realized that that point that he was going to get nowhere with the 29-year-old McGregor to get his help in stopping the photos.

Instead the photos were leaked anyway, showing Malignaggi getting thrashed by McGregor. Malignaggi left the came after that and decided he was done helping McGregor prepare for his August 26 fight against Floyd Mayweather Jr. at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, Nevada.

Malignaggi admits that he had problems in his first of two sparring sessions with McGregor, which was an 8 round session. Malignaggi was out of shape and not prepared for the how hard it would be given the circumstances. However, in the second session he was ready for that one, as he’d done some training to get prepared. Malignaggi found out before the sparring session that he was expected to spar a full 12 rounds with McGregor. Malignaggi says he thinks they chose 12 rounds because they felt that he would wear down under the full 12 rounds because he’ struggled in an 8 round spar.

“I had this conversation with Conor after the second sparring in the dressing room and this is probably when I realized what a [expletive-head] he is,” said Malignaggi to mmafighting.com. “He looks at me, and I’m expecting, ‘you’re right, Paulie – you got it, let’s just keep this good work going.’ “Instead, he looks at me and he gives me this smirk, laughs at me and he starts walking away from me.”

That was reaction Malignaggi got from McGregor when he asked him stop the photos. Malignaggi should have known better than to ask McGregor. He’s got a big fight that he needs as much publicity as possible in order to increase the PPV buys for the fight. The more PPV buys the fight generates, the more money it means for him. It’s already bad that a lot of boxing and MMA fans see the fight as a circus event and not a true fight. The tickets still haven’t sold out for the Mayweather-McGregor fight at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, Nevada. Normally for mega fights, the tickets sell out quickly. That was the case for the Mayweather Jr. vs. Manny Pacquiao in 2015. That fight sold out fast and ended up bringing in 4.6 million buys.

With the Mayweather-McGregor fight still not sold out, there’s a good chance that this fight doesn’t sell nearly as many pay-per-view buys as many boxing fans think it will. For the fight to bring in a lot of buys, it’s going to take a lot more than leaked photos of Malignaggi getting worked over by McGregor. It’s going to take a lot of publicity, and even that probably won’t do it. Mayweather has a bad reputation in the eyes of a lot of boxing fans for him underperforming by fighting in a dull safety first manner in his fights against Manny Pacquiao, Andre Berto, Marcos Maidana, Saul Canelo and Robert Guerrero. Most of Mayweather’s fights in his 6-fight Showtime contract before retiring were boring to watch.

According to Max Kellerman of ESPN, Malignaggi didn’t realize that he was being brought in as a prop for publicity to help McGregor sell his fight against Mayweather. Malignaggi came into the camp thinking he was going to help McGregor with sparring, but that’s not what this was about. He was there to help promote the fight.

“Paulie Malignaggi thought going in he was going there to help Conor McGregor prepare for a fight that he has no chance to win, by the way,” said ESPN analyst Max Kellerman on ESPN’s First Take. “He’s not going to land a punch. He’s not going to land a clean punch on Mayweather. He isn’t going to land one shot. Malignaggi goes in thinking he’s helping to prepare Conor McGregor for a sporting event. What he doesn’t realize this is not an athletic competition. There is no competition. It’s an exhibition that Mayweather is going to put on. So, what Paulie didn’t realize is he was being brought in to help McGregor fight Mayweather. He was brought in as a prop in the publicity, in the buildup of a show. In the buildup, he was there to make people believe McGregor had a chance against Mayweather, because any slipup in sparring any way he could be used as propaganda, pro-Conor to show people, ‘Ph look, he’s doing well against a boxer, that’s how he was going to be used and now he’s disillusioned, Paulie is with the fact that he was used in that way, but of course he was going to be used in that way. I know Paulie through the years. He isn’t going to make things up. He’s going to shot straight. I think he was incredulous. In this case where he goes in believing he’s helping someone with a sporting event, and it turns out he’s a prop in a promotional game, and then he becomes disillusioned because Paulie’s that kind of guy. ‘You want me to help you box? Oh, I’m just being used as a prop,’ and now he’s upset about it, as he should be. McGregor has never been in a professional boxing ring as a participant, and he wants to face Floyd Mayweather; not like the 50th ranked guy in the world, which by the way, is difficult if you’ve never been a professional boxer, but Floyd Mayweather, and people are trying to sell it as a competitive fight,” said Kellerman.

McGregor needed to get a bigger name to help him with sparring if the idea was to have boxing fans believe in him from stuff leaked. Vasyl Lomachenko has reportedly volunteered to help McGregor with sparring.

”@TheNotoriousMMA need another sparring partner to test your skills against?” said Lomachenko on his Twitter.

McGregor is quite a bit heavier than WBO super featherweight champion Lomachenko, who fights in the 130 lb. division. Lomachenko might rehydrate to close to 140 lbs. In contrast, McGregor might rehydrate up to the low 170s. He would be outweighing Lomachenko by 30 pounds during the sparring sessions. However, Lomachenko would likely give McGregor a boxing lesson each time he sparred with him. Lomachenko is a 2-time Olympic gold medalist from Ukraine. He finished his amateur career with a record of 395-1. McGregor would look bad if photos leaked of him getting worked over by Lomachenko on a daily basis. Unlike the out of shape Malignaggi, Lomachenko would easily spar 8 to 12 rounds without gassing out against McGregor.

Kellerman is probably right about Malignaggi being used as a prop by McGregor in the promotion of the fight. What’s disturbing is how Malignaggi would go into McGregor’s camp without suspecting what the reason for him being brought in there. Malignaggi is old enough why McGregor would want him of all people to be his sparring partner. Kellerman does a great job of saying why McGregor would want him there.

Those reasons are as follows:

– Leaked photos of Malignaggi appearing to get the worst of it. Even if the photos are totally inaccurate to what transpired during the 2 sparring sessions, it still helps McGregor, because it makes the boxing and MMA fans believe that he’s doing well.

– Any news of McGregor beating up a popular boxer like Malignaggi helps the promotion of the fight, because it makes people believe that McGregor has a chance. Right now, the single most things that is hindering the Mayweather-McGregor fight from breaking records and making both fighters huge money is the fact that so many fans believe the fight is a mismatch. I don’t know if there are enough fans that are gullible to believe that McGregor really has a chance to win the fight. For the fans to change their mind, they’re going to need to keep hearing more stuff from Malignaggi. But I’m not sure if it’s going to be enough for just Malignaggi to create interest in the fight. There’s got to be something else that changes the opinion of the many doubters that view the fight as one of the worst mismatches in boxing history. McGregor needs a relevant boxer that can help him spar. If photos and/or video leak out showing McGregor beating a well-respected fighter in his prime, it would help the promotion of the Mayweather-McGregor fight a lot more than the Malignaggi news. He’s not a big enough name and not respected enough to get the skeptical fans on board.

With Malignaggi being a Showtime boxing analyst, it makes you wonder whether the reason he’s doing all this talking about his experiences during the McGregor camp is a move to help pump up interest in the Mayweather-McGregor fight. After all, this is going to help Showtime the more that Malignaggi talks about the McGregor sparring that he did.

You don’t normally get commentators for major networks tearing into fighters that are about to fight in a huge PPV contest on their networks. Can you imagine HBO analyst Jim Lampley talking down a big pay per view fight like Gennady Golovkin vs. Saul Canelo Alvarez in the weeks leading up to the fight? I don’t think Lampley would do it. He would be trying to promote the fight in a positive light rather than talk it down. It looks as if McGregor is playing the bad guy role here, and that kind of sells to the boxing and MMA fans.

The more negative things that Malignaggi says about McGregor on a daily basis with his nonstop interviews on his experiences in his sparring, it only creates interest in the fight. You can argue that this helps Malignaggi because he’s with Showtime and they’re the ones that will be selling the fight on PPV. Is Malignaggi doing all this talking about McGregor on purpose to create interest in the fight or is he lashing out at him because of the 2 leaked photos of their sparring sessions that showed him looking beaten up and getting dominated.

Malignaggi says he wore McGregor down by the 6th round during their second spar by throwing a lot of body shots. McGregor needed to catch his breath at one point, and he shoved Malignaggi to the canvas. At least that’s what Malignaggi says. But if this true, then it doesn’t bode well for McGregor against Mayweather. If he gets tired after just 6 rounds, he’s going to get pummeled and stopped by Mayweather on August 26.

“The funny thing about the push down was this — it was during one of his worst moments,” Malignaggi said. “He pushed me down on the floor to try and catch a break and the instant I went down I got back up. I remember when I was down I continued to trash talk. I said, ‘Buddy, you need a break?’ because Cortez had to wipe off my gloves. I started to take it to him right after that. I told him, ‘you don’t get no breaks here’, and I started to hit him with more body shots. I said, ‘take those, they don’t feel good’ and I could hear him whimper off the body shots, too.”

McGregor getting tired from a long 12 round sparring session with Malignaggi isn’t surprising. McGregor’s MMA fights in the UFC are 5 rounds. He doesn’t have to fight 12 rounds like in a boxing match. Moreover, McGregor usually gets his opponents out of there quickly by knocking them out or getting them to submit. McGregor isn’t fight the full 5 rounds all that often. He recently went 5 rounds with Nate Diaz in their rematch, but that was a rare occasion. A lot of fans thought McGregor deserved to lose the rematch with Diaz. It was one of those fights that could have gone either way. It just happened to McGregor’s way. He’s the more popular guy.

Malignaggi seems believable in what he’s saying about how he was pushed down rather than knocked down. It just makes McGregor look really bad that he wouldn’t address to the media that the photo of Malignaggi on the canvas wasn’t from a knockdown. It would make McGregor look better if he told the people what the deal is with that photo. However, it still arguably helps McGregor a lot more for the boxing and MMA fans to believe that Malignaggi was on the canvas as an end result of him knocking him down with a big shot. McGregor hasn’t spoken about the photos. The only thing he’s said is he whipped Malignaggi’s backside during the sessions.