Paulie Malignaggi has been on a rampage about his controversial sparring session with Conor McGregor ever since McGregor released brief footage from the session nearly two years ago. Recently, McGregor also released a series of photographs appearing to show him getting the better of Malignaggi on several occasions during the spar. Malignaggi’s retort has remained consistent: release the entire footage.
Should the entire sparring session be released to the public, Malignaggi argues, the raw footage would tell a different story, one that features Malignaggi getting the better of his nemesis. In a recent Bare Knuckle Fighting Championship 6 pre-fight press conference, though, Malignaggi appeared to be almost complimentary of McGregor, or at least the sparring session itself, which he says actually made for some decent competition due to the poor condition Malignaggi was in at the time:
“If you see it unedited, I actually thought it was pretty entertaining,” Malignaggi said. “And the only reason it’s entertaining is because I’m talking shit, he’s talking shit, and it’s mildly competitive because I don’t have enough air, oxygen, to assault him.”
Malignaggi’s condition was so poor that the former boxing champion even conceded that had McGregor fought different by turning up the aggression, McGregor possibly could have even put him away:
“I’ll tell you one thing about Conor, he could have probably stopped me in 12 rounds because I don’t have the air supply to go 12 rounds under those circumstances, but he’s got no balls at all,” Malignaggi said. “So every time I was able to land a shot or two, he gave me my points. He gave me a chance to reoxygen. All I had to do was pot shot him and rip him with random shots here and there, and it would domesticate him enough to pace myself throughout the 12 rounds. “
Paulie Malignaggi will be facing close friend and training partner of Conor McGregor, Artem Lobov, at Bare Knuckle Fighting Championship 6 on June 22 in Tampa, Florida.
What do you make of these comments from Paulie Malignaggi? And do you believe the footage and photographs released tell the true story of the sparring session?
