Boxing: Mcgregor’s impressive defeat
It was “the fight that was supposed to be a farce”, said Les Carpenter in The Guardian. When retired boxing champion Floyd Mayweather agreed to take on mixed martial arts supremo Conor Mcgregor, pundits huffily declared that the bout would be a meaningless mismatch. Mayweather, the most accomplished boxer of his generation, was unbeaten in all 49 of his fights; Mcgregor, 29, had never set foot in a professional boxing ring. Yet when the bell rang at the T-mobile Arena in Las Vegas on Saturday night, “Mcgregor delivered substance”. Despite an awkward stance that looked like he was “trying to remember newly learnt dance moves”, the Irish fighter got the better of his American opponent in the first two rounds. He soon became fatigued, and Mayweather started unleashing some savage blows. But Mcgregor stayed on his feet all the way through to the tenth, when the referee stopped the fight in Mayweather’s favour.
It was an extraordinarily impressive performance, said James Edwards in The Independent. Mcgregor landed 111 strikes in nine-and-a-half rounds; when multiple world-title winner Manny Pacquiao fought Mayweather in 2015, the Filipino managed only 81 hits over the full 12 rounds. Let’s hope the Irishman’s efforts will make boxing purists give mixed martial arts (MMA) fighting the respect it deserves. We mustn’t delude ourselves, said Nick Pitt in The Sunday Times. Sure, Mcgregor showed a lot of courage, particularly in those first couple of rounds. But Mayweather was “merely assessing” his opponent’s capabilities so that he could give him a proper “lesson”. The American said afterwards that the fight was his last; “it was also one of his easiest”.
Over-hyped as it was, this bout was at least “transparent in its core purpose”, said Luke Reddy on BBC Sport online: “to make as much money as possible”. Mayweather was guaranteed $100m; add in the pay-per-view receipts and his purse will swell to as much as $300m. And Mcgregor will “make do with around $100m – roughly $3m a minute”. Credit to Mayweather for this. Recognising the public’s appetite for a cross-discipline match-up, he floated the idea to MMA’S administrators. “I’m not a damn fool,” he explained. “If I see an opportunity to make $300m in 36 minutes, why not?”