Mayweather: McGregor should stick to the UFC

Boxingnews24.com

By Allan Fox: Mayweather: Floyd Mayweather Jr. recommends that Conor McGregor stay with the UFC and not continue to do boxing matches in the future. Mayweather feels that the 29-year-old McGregor has a lot of good paydays still ahead of him if he stays in the UFC and continues to fight in that organization.

A very old and slow looking Mayweather stopped McGregor in the 10th round last Saturday night at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, Nevada. Mayweather got the win by walking down McGregor, hitting him with single shots until the referee Robert Byrd stepped in to stop the contest in round 10. McGregor looked good for a fighter with no amateur background in boxing. He fought well enough to leave open the door for a return to boxing at some point in the future.

Mayweather might not agree with that decision, but that’s not his business. He’s done. McGregor will do what’s right for his career. If he decides he wants to fight another time or two in boxing, you can bet he’ll do it, and the fans will eagerly purchase the fight as long as he takes on a big star like Saul Canelo Alvarez.

“We got the win,” said Mayweather to Fighthype. “I told you guys it wouldn’t go the distance. He has a career, and Robert Byrd thought about his career,” said Mayweather in talking about McGregor.

Mayweather seems to be gloating about his win. Mayweather won the fight, but McGregor came out of it looking better than expected. That was a shallow victory for Mayweather, because he was supposed to have looked a lot better than that against a guy with a 0-0 record going into the fight. When you have mismatch like that, you’re supposed to win easily. McGregor was competitive with Mayweather, winning rounds 1-3, and possibly the 4th as well. That makes it 5 rounds to 4 in favor of Mayweather before he scored a knockout in the 10th.

”No, because he’s going to have a lot of paydays in the UFC,” said Mayweather about McGregor. ”Everyone talks about how many rounds he won. The game plan was to shoot his load, and to keep coming straight ahead,” said Mayweather.

With the kind of money McGregor can make in fighting occasional boxing matches against star fighters like Saul Canelo Alvarez, I don’t see why he shouldn’t to continue to do that. It’s not Mayweather’s career. He already made his money, and he’s now going back into retirement. McGregor should be free to return to boxing if he wishes to get some additional paydays. McGregor makes good money in the UFC. but nothing like the kind of money that top fighters make in boxing. McGregor is supposed to be getting over $100 million for the Mayweather fight from last Saturday.

McGregor isn’t going to make that kind of money in boxing against anyone ever again, but who’s to say that he can’t make at least $10 million for a fight against Canelo. Even if McGregor loses his boxing matches, you can’t deny him the right to compete. At least McGregor took the risk to fight in another sport that he wasn’t trained in. We never saw Mayweather enter the octagon to compete in the UFC.

It would be nice to see Mayweather get out of his comfort zone to risk getting beaten in a sport he’s not familiar with. That’s likely the only way Mayweather will be able to return for another big payday. He’s not going to be able to sell another fight against a UFC guy. The boxing public isn’t going to want to watch Mayweather plod around the ring, looking slow and over-the-hill against a hand-picked opponent.

Mayweather is saying that he won’t be returning for another fight now that he’s done with McGregor, but we’ve seen him retire before and comeback. It’s possible he’ll return to the ring if his money starts disappearing quickly with his free spending habits. Mayweather says he’s not going to return, but I’ll believe that when I see it.

If another UFC fighter rivals McGregor’s popularity, don’t be shocked to see Mayweather talking up a fight against the fighter to see if he can get another payday. I’m hoping Mayweather stays retired, but old habits die hard. If he sees someone he can get $300 million fighting in the UFC, he’ll be back.

Mayweather was fighting for the first time in 2 years in ending his retirement/vacation to come back and fight UFC champion McGregor. Mayweather didn’t want to fight a boxer, because he said there was only one fighter he wanted and that was McGregor. The reality is there wasn’t anyone in boxing that could give Mayweather a payday of $300 million. At this point in his career, McGregor is more popular than Mayweather or anyone else in boxing. McGregor has routinely been bringing in well over 1 million buys for his fights in the UFC. So, Mayweather chose to hitch a ride by taking advantage of McGregor’s popularity.

On the surface, the whole premise of an MMA fighter facing Mayweather in boxing made no sense. It’s already been shown before that fighters from those 2 sports are unable to crossover and do well in competing. But the casual fans were still interested in seeing the fight. They might not have known the history of when other fighters had tried to do this kind of thing in the past.

The thing that grabbed the fans was the popularity of McGregor and the once great skills of Mayweather. The fans bought it regardless of the fight being called a mismatch from day one. The actual fight turned out to be competitive, if only because Mayweather appeared to take it easy on McGregor until the 6th round. Mayweather also hadn’t fought in a while, and he was old at 40. The fans that thought they were going to see the Mayweather from 2 years ago were shocked at how bad he looked in the ring against McGregor.

It was like watching an entirely different fighter. Father time had really done a vicious number on Mayweather’s boxing skills, leaving him a flat-footed, slower fighter, who no longer had the mobility and energy that he once had. Mayweather said it himself that he’s not the same fighter he once was, and he wasn’t kidding. He’s a shell of his former self.

McGregor fought well enough not to embarrass himself, and to leave open the possibility that he could fight again in boxing in the future.

“This is my last fight, ladies and gentleman. For sure, this is my last fight,” said Mayweather. “I’m not the same fighter I was 21 years ago. I’m not the same fighter I was 10 years ago. I’m not even the same fighter I was two years ago.”

It’s good that Mayweather realizes that he’s not the same fighter he was 2 years ago. If he made the mistake of thinking he still has his talent intact, he might do something foolish like make a return to boxing against someone like Keith Thurman or Terence Crawford and end up getting thrashed by them.

Like a lot of people, I was surprised when I first learned that Mayweather was going to be fighting McGregor instead of someone from the sport of boxing.

Mayweather quickly dismissed the idea of him fighting anyone from boxing, saying he’s not interested in fighting anyone from his old sport. I didn’t understand why Mayweather wouldn’t at least return for one fight before retiring again. But after seeing how bad Mayweather looked against McGregor, I can understand why he selected him instead of a fighter from boxing. Mayweather’s physical skills have eroded so badly that he would be in danger of losing to any good fighter in boxing world fighting.