Many who watched the Floyd Mayweather vs. Conor McGregor bout on Saturday night would agree that the Irishman had little left to give
Not everyone. however.
FOX Sports’ Skip Bayless, who is best known as the co-host of “Skip and Shannon: Undisputed” on FS1, has claimed that Floyd Mayweather Jr. was saved from Conor McGregor on Saturday night…
While there is obvious speculation that Bayless’ video was a trolling effort intended to provoke, he does attempt to substantiate his points legitimately (h/t MMAJunkie):
“My initial biggest takeaway is, Conor McGregor just put up a hell of a fight,” Bayless says. “I think he gave Floyd a lot more than Floyd thought that he was going to get. I think Floyd was in trouble on the scorecard, number one, for a while.
“… Floyd Mayweather was in trouble several times in this fight. But the turning point for for me came in Round 9. … Conor, coming off his best round of the fight, a bounce-back round in Round 8 – in my card, I had Conor ahead. I had him a round ahead at this point with the bounce-back in 8. In 9, he comes right out, aggressively, and he stunned Floyd. He hit him with a hard left, buckled him, and Floyd’s in trouble in the corner, and Conor tries to go in for the kill.
“And it happened so fast – I need to see a replay, and you Conor fans know what I’m talking about – but he had him, and Robert Byrd pulls him away and saves Floyd. … Then he was forced to back off into the middle of the ring, and it’s like he had spent himself on that salvo. … I swear, Robert Byrd saves the fight. He saved it. I think he gave Floyd Mayweather a big break in that fight that he didn’t deserve.
“… I think we saw a battle that Floyd Mayweather reached down and won – with a little help from his friend Robert Byrd, the Las Vegas referee. So on Floyd’s turf, with his (boxing) judges, with his referee, Las Vegas’ own – they saved him. They pulled him out of harm’s way, because this could’ve gotten ugly. It had 49-1 written all over it.”
