Mayweather vs. McGregor, Aug. 26

If only there was as much sandbagging in Houston as there was in Vegas last night.

 

Point to SnarkShark.

Give Mayweather credit for playing it smart, letting McGregor punch himself out, then making his move.

 

There were several, but this is the one that comes to mind: VIDEO: Mayweather vs. McGregor post-fight show

Ariel Helwani, who is one of the most popular MMA journalists and does break a lot of stories, literally says the words "moral victory" in this post-fight video. But he has been a little bit of an MMA homer during this whole process, so I'm not surprised.

 

Definitely no such thing as a moral victory in a combat sport. One person's hand is raised, the other one loses. If you willingly enter the ring/octagon/squared circle, you aren't going in there hoping for a moral victory.

That being said, there's the flip side that said McGregor wouldn't stand a chance against Mayweather. He won't land a single punch. Mayweather will knock him out in the first round. Mayweather will toy with him and make him look stupid (you could argue Mayweather did that in rounds 9 and 10).

The reality, though, is that someone who has never had a professional boxing match entered the ring with a boxer a lot of people say is the GOAT and not only won at least one round, he landed more punches than Pacquiao landed against Mayweather when they fought (according to the crack investigative reporting team over at the ESPN twitter account).

I'll give McGregor credit for lasting a lot longer than the majority of people on this thread thought he'd last. And I'll give him credit for actually touching Mayweather with a few good punches early in the bout. McGregor's MMA strategy was for shit. I think once he hit Mayweather with that uppercut and Mayweather was still standing, Mayweather wasn't scared of being caught with a lucky punch anymore.

There's a reason Mayweather is 50-0. But there's also a reason McGregor is one of the best in his sport. I think, if anything, McGregor's stock rises with this fight, because he put up a somewhat formidable fight, probably better than anybody else making their professional boxing debut against one of the best ever.

 

In a vacuum, I think it's actually fairly reasonable to say that MMA scored a "moral victory" on Saturday night, in that one of the sport's top performers didn't completely embarrass himself against one of the greatest boxers in the history of that sport, arguably. He was bringing one skill out of a varied toolbox into the ring, and had just a few months to hone it. A comparison might be to see Usain Bolt run a marathon - or a Kenyan or Ethiopian world-class marathoner run the 100. In those instances, the clock would tell the tale. Here, the only barometer was to get in the ring against the best.

The problem, however, is that the MMA fan base set the bar very high going in. Many of them - including some here, I think - gave McGregor a fighting chance to win it. Some people picked him to win. Plenty thought he was going to knock Mayweather out, early. And so the rest of us have an initial reaction to the "moral victory" talk like the goalposts have been moved.

I guess they don't pay attention to politics and the value in trying to lower expectations leading into a debate.

 

A question for MMA fans: Why would McGregor go back to MMA after this? He held his own after just a few months of boxing-specific training. Why not just box now? It would be an interesting ongoing story, for sure, to see him pursue a title shot.

 

That has been a question MMA fans and media have been asking since this fight was announced. Unless McGregor was totally clowned by Mayweather, many doubt he would return to the octagon after this fight. He will make more money and have more control over his career as a boxer. And now, he is well known to the boxing media and possibly earned some begrudging respect for his performance. In one of the post-fight interviews, McGregor even referred to himself as a "free agent."

But he still does have four fights left on his contract with the UFC, and he had to give up a large portion of his earnings for this fight to the UFC for them to allow him to do it. I read somewhere that the money the UFC is making just off of their cut of McGregor's paycheck will be the biggest payday of the year for the UFC. So that certainly complicates him striking out to just be a boxer.

 

Also, what does this even mean?

 

Who's the money boxing match for him? I'm not going to pay to watch him fight the people he'll need to fight to work his way up.

What if Floyd massaged the pace of the first few rounds to make it look good? What if he fought with less than his usual defense because he had not issue taking punches from him? The next opponent, trying to work his way up the ladder and not just cash in as a showman, could embarrass McGregor.

As much as Floyd picked him apart when he wanted to, there's no way he could survive with GGG or Alvarez.

 

Conor's 29. It would take him probably five years of mud fights to be a belt-worthy boxer. I think it's too late for him to make that switch. But I do wonder how he's going to go from $100 million or whatever for a standup fight that didn't leave him cut, to $5 or $10 million to get kicked in the face or choked by Nate Diaz. I wouldn't be surprised if he decides he's good and calls it a career, at least for the time being. He's in an interesting spot.

 

His next fight will also have nowhere near the hype and payday of this one. The curiosity and uniqueness was what drove the box office for McGregor-Mayweather. Now that we've seen McGregor is little more than an average boxer, why would people pay money to either see him fight another average boxer or get soundly beaten again by a good one?

 

Agreed, taking shots from a 40-year-old Mayweather, who never had a reputation is a banger, is one thing, getting hit by GGG is something completely different.