Mayweather, McGregor exchange profanities, barbs in Brooklyn
NEW YORK — Floyd Mayweather Jr. tossed $1 bills in Conor McGregor’s face.
McGregor waved Jay Z’s new CD in Mayweather’s direction and quoted a Biggie Smalls lyric as some sort of warning shot. The rest? The fashionably late fighters treated fans that waited hours for the latest stop in a promotional tour to about 30 minutes of profanities, crude cracks about body parts, and, well, a steady stream of even more f-bombs.
If Mayweather and McGregor turned their latest showdown into a true PPV — pay-per-vulgarity — they’d collect a few million bucks before they even hit the ring for their Aug. 26 fight.
All this commotion — a DJ and rapper Doug E. Fresh warmed up the crowd of 13,165 — for a press conference.
“If it even is a press conference,” McGregor cracked. “It’s a bit of a roasting.”
McGregor, who turns 29 today, was the picture of cool as he walked the red carpet inside Barclays Center. The UFC star wore floral pants, sunglasses and ditched a shirt for a polar bear mink coat he bought earlier in the day in a Fifth Avenue shopping spree. Scratch that gift from the wish list. He could afford the outlandish outfit. McGregor and Mayweather will earn perhaps nine-figure paydays while fight fans will be charged $100 to watch on TV in high def and can’t get into the arena for anything less than a $500 face-value ticket —if they’re lucky.
But in New York, where a “Hamilton” seat can cost you a rent check, there’s still a deal to be found — even in the fight game.
The fight angling to become the richest in sports history is offering fans a bargainbasement price for this weeklong smacktalking circus: Free. It’s the cleanest fourletter word uttered by the Irish sensation McGregor and the undefeated boxer Mayweather during a foul-mouthed promotional tour that stopped Thursday in New York. They had previously made stops in Los Angeles and Toronto.
The tour ends today with its fourth stop in London — who knows, that may be more rounds than the actual fight, which many experts believe will be lopsided for the undefeated Mayweather.
Yes, the hype could go down as a more entertaining time than the 154-pound fight Aug. 26 in Las Vegas.
McGregor encouraged the crowd to shout expletives at Mayweather and his family before launching into a nearly 10-minute profanity-laced tirade in Toronto.
Mayweather mocked McGregor for being less wealthy and answering White. And some fans accused McGregor of being racially insensitive when he yelled, “Dance for me, boy! Dance for me, son!” during an exchange.
Mutual respect between the fighters has suffered a resounding KO.
“I don’t think these guys necessarily hated each other before we started this thing,” UFC President Dana White said. “But by the time we leave London, they might not necessarily like each other very much.”