UFC featherweight champion Conor McGregor has an uncanny ability to talk trash. Everyone within 30 pounds in MMA wants to fight him. The greatest boxer of his generation, Floyd Mayweather Jr, wants to fight him. And after his latest media event for UFC 202, WWE wrestlers want to fight him.
It began when during a recent UFC 202 media event McGregor was asked if he was interested in the WWE. McGregor said he wasn’t interested, because pro wrestlers couldn’t fight. ‘Notorious’ did make exceptions for owner Vince McMahon and wrestlers Stone Cold and The Rock, referring to them as “Dons.”
However, McGregor summed pro wrestling up unkindly. For the most part, WWE guys are p*****w,” he explained.
Kurt Angle bit.
Angle is a former world and Olympic champion in freestyle wrestling, and former WWF champion, and should know better.
Conor is either the most loved or the most hated fighter in UFC, and that’s a credit to him, said Angle, to Justin Barrasso for SI. But to cross over into another career, into pro wrestling–something you don’t even know–and call WWE wrestlers ‘p——‘? That’s offensive. Don’t talk about someone you don’t know.
Angle is 47 now, but, in what sounds like an outtake from the old guys jawing at the barber shop scene in Coming to America, he said if he was five years younger, McGregor would be in trouble.
I’d take him down, then ground and pound him until I knocked him out, said Angle. Conor is a polished fighter, but with my size, I would overpower him. It wouldn’t be that difficult for me.
Coming out of the Olympics, with the way I was training, McGregor wouldn’t have had a chance in hell. I was also 230 pounds, so that’s not really fair. But pound for pound, he might be the best fighter today.
People always throw the Nick Diaz loss at him, but Nick Diaz is a tough son of a bitch. That loss doesn’t take away from what he has accomplished. He’s a great fighter and the poster boy for UFC, and that’s exactly why I told him to get his head out of Dana White’s ass. Dana knows that’s his boy, and Dana has picked on wrestling in the past, so Conor is just following suit behind Dana. So Conor, it’s time to get your head out of Dana’s ass.
I’d like to challenge Conor. Take five bumps with me in the ring. Just five bumps. When I did that for the first time, I took three and said, ‘F*** this, I’m quitting.’ I quit for a couple days and my manager talked me into going back. I know how Dana White and Conor continue to bash the business, but I challenge either of them to get in the ring with me and take five bumps. Once they do, they’ll realize how tough it is–and that’s not even a fraction of what it takes to be a pro wrestler.”
“The pure fact is there is nothing I’ve ever done that is tougher than pro wrestling. It doesn’t make you tough from a fighting standpoint, but it does make you tough from what you have to do every day and how you have to sacrifice. They’re both very tough to do, but they’re tough in different ways.
John Cena would tap in twenty seconds in the Octagon, but he is still the biggest badass to ever walk the face of the earth. This kid has been on top for thirteen years. No one has ever done that. He’s now in his fourteenth year on top.
I couldn’t do it. Hulk Hogan didn’t do that, Stone Cold had four or five years tops, and it was the same with The Rock before he went to Hollywood. From a toughness standpoint, there is nobody tougher than John Cena. I would love to see Conor McGregor try to be on top of WWE for thirteen years. He wouldn’t make it.
Both sides – UFC and pro wrestling – are tough. Conor has no idea about wrestling, and no concept of the travel, or wrestling every night, or even the bumping in the ring. To be a WWE wrestler, and to be on the road full-time, you have to be a badass. The fact that he thinks they’re a bunch of p*****s and that he’d slap them around shows his ignorance.
First of all, he only weighs about 140 pounds. I’m not knocking him or saying he’s not dangerous, but the fact is WWE wrestlers aren’t p*****s, they are badasses. This is because of how much they endure. They come out every night and wrestle. They take bumps. It’s the toughest thing I ever did, and I won a gold medal in the Olympics. I don’t see a gold medal on Conor. Obviously, he’s a UFC champion, but he doesn’t know what it takes to be a wrestler.
