According to Paulie Malignaggi, Conor McGregor had to make out that he had taken more punishment than he had in order to get his fight with Floyd Mayweather stopped
McGregor was clearly exhausted going into the 10th round against Mayweather at T-Mobile Arena on Saturday night.
Having started the bout well, the UFC lightweight champion gassed out early and was eventually stopped by Mayweather. Referee Robert Byrd’s intervention was argued to be premature by McGregor himself, but most felt that it was the right call.
Following the fight, Malignaggi made some pretty eyebrow-raising claims about McGregor’s heart that will not make for good reading for fans of the Irishman. According to the former two weight world champion, however, this would not deter him from seeking a fight inside the ropes with the 29-year-old MMA megastar:
“F*** yeah, why not? That’s the easiest money I can make. Are you kidding me? He’s not very likable. I mean, listen, everything I said about him came true [on Saturday]. You can’t edit this video. You can’t edit this fight. Everything I said came true. I said, early on he’s going to get through it and he can give you confusing looks early on. Then, when you start breaking him down, he’s not the gutsiest guy. What’s he do? He stops punching back, he goes into pockets of action where he doesn’t throw back at all. He starts throwing less and less, he doesn’t want to fight you when he’s tired. And then finally, at the end, he basically let himself get stopped,” Malignaggi told iFL TV.
“He started stumbling around like he was hurt, all over the place. He wasn’t that hurt. He was hurt, but he wasn’t that hurt. So, stop stumbling around. What are you stumbling around for? He was looking for a way out of the fight at a certain point. He said after the fight that they should have let him finish the round, they should have let him finish… You cannot go a minute straight without punching and be assaulted for that whole minute straight and expect the ref to not stop the fight. He said, ‘Oh I should have been allowed to go out on my back.’ Buddy, they’ll let you go out on your back. Throw a punch or two and the referee won’t stop it.”
