How Conor McGregor can beat Floyd Mayweather
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Loading...Floyd Joy Mayweather Junior was always just about to be beaten. Sául "Canelo" Álvarez (2013) was going to be too big, too strong and too young for him. Manny Pacquiao (2015) was going to be too fast. Marcos Maidana (2014, twice) was going to be too wild. Ricky Hatton (2007) was going to be too aggressive. And yet Mayweather went 49 fights without losing, always making even the biggest guns look like they were firing blanks.
Is it racial?It is not true. Boxing fans are colour-blind. Black boxers have been revered from Joe Louis to Anthony Joshua. But Mayweather, a five-division world champion, was right to say that he doesn't get the respect that his record deserves.
In June 2012, Mayweather reported to the Clark County Detention Center in Las Vegas to start a 90-day jail sentence for domestic abuse (he was released after 60). Even without that conviction, Mayweather would not be a poster boy for boxing.
Outside of the ring, there was too much emphasis on money and the material rewards of boxing. When the seven- and eight-figure paydays started coming, Mayweather changed his nickname from "Pretty Boy" to "Money".
Mayweather's genius was to hit without getting hit in return. He was the Einstein of the shoulder roll, the Picasso of self-defence. Just because you had shelled out for your pay-per-view ticket, Mayweather wasn't going to stand there and get battered for you. So he was never in life-changing, blood-drenched wars after which the combatants would never be quite the same men again.
After the Pacquiao snooze-fest, Mayweather fought one last time, against Andre Berto on 12 September 2015, before retiring.Almost immediately the wild rumour began to circulate. Mayweather would come back for one last fight to beat the record of the great Rocky Marciano - also 49 and 0. Fight number 50 would be against Conor McGregor.
It seemed unlikely. McGregor had no boxing licence at the time (he does now); he is under contract to the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) franchise; and any boxing match in Las Vegas - and Mayweather always fights in Vegas - would need to be sanctioned by the chairman and commissioners of the Nevada State Athletic Commission. Mayweather vs McGregor felt like a feverish fantasy of social media. Yet the fight edges closer to reality with every passing day.
"The fight between me and McGregor will happen," Mayweather said.
In the eleven years since Kavanagh started coaching McGregor, he has turned a novice boxer into the world's supreme mixed martial artist. But all those hard-earned lessons will be left in the locker room if McGregor faces Mayweather. They fight in 12-ounce boxing gloves or they don't fight at all.
Yes, McGregor's background is boxing, but he was a novice boxer. If he fights Floyd Mayweather, he will be meeting the greatest defensive boxer of all time. It is like a boy racer taking on a Formula One driver.
Steve Bunce, the boxing commentator, said, "McGregor will struggle to win an Irish title as a boxer. He is a novice, his feet are dreadful, he turns his head when he punches and lifts his chin up. Mayweather would win without taking a punch. It would be a massacre."
But if the fight of the 21st century happens then Mayweather would be a man in his forties facing a man in his twenties who has made his own reputation by knocking other men out. Can McGregor possibly beat Mayweather? Only if he does what 49 other opponents could never do - get close enough to hit him.
Freak show or the most lucrative fight of all time? Probably both. It will be impossible to miss it. Conor McGregor's chances against Floyd Mayweather are written off by all the experts but romantics will believe that he has a puncher's chance against a man who is 12 years his senior.
Source: Bloomberg Pro Terminal
Trader Bozhidar Arabadzhiev
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