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Retired professional boxer Floyd Mayweather Jr. shockingly admitted to hardly training for his 2017 superfight against UFC superstar Conor McGregor. Mayweather, 43, revealed he didn’t take boxing the famed MMA fighter all that seriously, at least as much as his other 48 professional prizefights.
“For the Conor McGregor fight, I didn’t really train,” Mayweather said per Drink Champs. All I did was do push-ups and sit-ups, boxed a few times, hit the bag a few times. Sometimes I wouldn’t go to the gym for a week.”
Mayweather stopped McGregor in the 10th round in the second best-selling boxing pay-per-view event in history. But the knockout win came way later than most pundits expected. McGregor seemed to get off to a fast start during the first few rounds of the fight until Mayweather started timing him better as the fight progressed.
But by the time of the stoppage, Mayweather was landing just about whatever punch he wanted to throw and McGregor was visibly winded from the action.
Still, Mayweather admitted he just wanted to put on a good show.
“I took it serious, but I wanted to have some fun in the fight and I wanted to entertain the people,” Mayweather said. ”
Mayweather Admits to Carrying McGregor 10 Rounds
Mayweather indicated he could have ended the fight against McGregor just about whenever and however he wanted. In fact, Mayweather essentially admitted to carrying McGregor 10 rounds
“You have to give the people a show, so I gave the people a show. If I wanted to go out there and f**k him up and blaze him right out the gate, I could’ve did that,” Mayweather said.
So why didn’t Mayweather gun for the quick stoppage win over McGregor? Because boxing’s best fighter of the last 20 years wanted to make a lucrative rematch more palatable to the general public.
“But my thing is this, if I would’ve did that, then it wouldn’t be probably a part two,” Mayweather said.
Mayweather Expects $600 Million for Rematch
Earlier this week, Mayweather told Mirror that he expected the massive sum of $600 million to rematch McGregor.
“For myself, the number is $600 million,” Mayweather said per Mirror. “If I’m going to go out there and risk it, it’d have to be worth it.”
So the question on everyone’s minds about a potential Mayweather-McGregor 2 event should be why fans would pay their money to watch the boxing event on PPV when they can’t legitimately expect both fighters to actually give their best effort.
Mayweather hasn’t competed inside a boxing ring since facing McGregor. Sure, the fighter scored a first-round knockout over kickboxer Tenshin Nasukawa in Japan in December 2018, but that one was just an exhibition contest that didn’t even go on either fighter’s official record.
What Mayweather essentially admitted about his McGregor fight this week was that maybe his 2017 superfight, the same one that busted several huge box office records, was also just an exhibition, at least fit might have been for one of its participants.
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Twitter: @Kelsey_McCarson