Mayweather, McGregor ready for much-hyped fight

LAS VEGAS » Conor McGregor has been kept pretty much under wraps ever since his fight with Floyd Mayweather Jr. was announced, emerging occasionally to trash Mayweather only to disappear again behind the closed doors of the UFC training center.

It’s not by accident. The biggest selling point of the spectacle that is Saturday night’s 154-pound fight is the unknown.

Is McGregor good enough to land a big punch on Mayweather? Did he acquire enough boxing skills in just a few short months to make what should be a lopsided fight competitive?

Inquiring minds want to know, and there are enough of them to make this the most watched fight in history. Some 50 million people in the U.S. alone are expected to gather with friends and family to see it all unfold.

“I will be the king of both sports,” McGregor crowed. “I’m already the king of fighting, I’ll soon be the king of boxing.”

Not so fast, said Mayweather, who comes from a boxing family and famously began throwing punches before he could walk.

“After 21 years I’ve been hit with everything and I’m still right here,” Mayweather said. “If you give it you must be able to take it.”

It’s a fight that really makes no sense other than millions of people want to watch it. But the economics of the fight wouldn’t make any sense, either, if people saw McGregor — the UFC star who has never boxed professionally — in action and decided he just wasn’t good enough to be in the ring with a fighter like Mayweather.

No mystique, no 5 million buys on Showtime payper-view. That’s why there was never any chance of McGregor having a tuneup fight.

And that is why the only boxing anyone outside McGregor’s inner circle has seen was him hitting the heavy bag in a comical media day performance and a few seconds of a UFC clip purportedly showing him knocking down Showtime announcer and former fighter Paulie Malignaggi.

No worries, said McGregor, who says his boxing talents shouldn’t be underestimated.