Former world boxing champion, current commentator, and future sparring partner for Conor McGregor Paulie Malignaggi appeared recently on Ariel Helwani’s The MMA Hour and discussed how Notorious could make the Floyd Mayweather fight a win. Malignaggi accompanied the pair on the four-day, three-country, four-city media shit show, and learned something about Notorious.
When I first saw the fight signed, I thought to myself, ‘Conor has to know he’s going to lose. I mean, subtly, he’s got to believe he’s going to lose.’ I thought he was doing it a lot for the money,” said Malignaggi, as transcribed by Shaun Al-Shatti for MMA Fighting. “I thought, ‘There’s no way this guy really believes he’s going to win.’ But through the press conferences day in, day out, day in, day out that I was at, I really noticed something in Conor’s character. This guy is a winner through and through, which I always believed he was. But this guy believes he’s going to win this fight.
“Now, whether it sounds ridiculous to the boxing fans or ridiculous to anybody else, it may sound ridiculous even to me or somebody else, he believes it wholeheartedly in his mind. There’s nothing this guy hasn’t been able to achieve in his life when doubt was pressed onto him. So in his mind, he’s doing the same thing he’s been doing his whole life: proving the doubters wrong, proving the odds wrong. And in his mind, he’s going to do it again, and he wholeheartedly believes that. I could tell there was emotion behind that trash talk, there was passion behind that trash talk. There was passion behind what he was saying. You can only be that passionate if you believe in where you’re going, what you’re doing.
What I’ve been saying from the start, you need to look if Conor can have certain moments in the fight. I don’t think you can just outright say, ‘Conor wins the fight.’ It’s just outright too much of a jump. But here’s where you can start to think Conor wins the fight: you look for Conor to have certain moments in the fight, whether he can get Floyd’s attention, maybe land a particular punch or particular shot or particular combination. Figure out ways where Floyd’s falling for certain things, because Floyd is so smart, he doesn’t fall for very many things. Figure out ways where you can set certain traps for Floyd and land a couple of shots here and there.
And here’s what happens: you have a moment here, you have a moment there. Sometimes, especially when you punch as hard as Conor McGregor, sometimes a moment becomes a bigger moment. Sometimes a bigger moment ends the fight. So you look at it like this: can Conor have a moment or two here and there? Because overall, the control of the fight, I believe, will be Floyd’s. Floyd fights for control and I believe Floyd will be in control.
Obviously, Floyd has more pros going into this fight because it is a boxing match. But when a guy hits as hard as Conor McGregor, all he needs to do is look to grab certain moments in the fight. A moment here, a moment there. Can he turn one of these moments into a bigger moment that can possibly turn into real danger for Floyd Mayweather? And that’s kind of how you want to view the fight, if you’re looking at Conor McGregor’s chances of winning the fight. Because if you just look at it, ‘Oh, Conor can win the fight’ — it’s not that simple, it’s not that black and white. There’s a lot of grey area in there. You probably favor Floyd Mayweather in the fight. But there’s intangibles that I just spoke about, that you think that maybe Conor has a chance.
If McGregor does win, Malignaggi thinks it won’t be bad for boxing, because he will stay where he is.
“I think then we’d get to keep Conor McGregor, said a laughing Malignaggi. We’ll steal him from the UFC, because then he’ll realize how much money he can make in boxing, especially with a win over Floyd Mayweather, and he’ll say, ‘You know what, I kind of like this paycheck. I might hang around for a little bit.’
But first things first, let’s see how the fight plays out. I think there’s ways and possibilities to where, even if you lose the fight, if he performs in a decent manner, he’ll come out with an optimal positive of the two. People will come out of the fight talking better about him than about Floyd. I think the only way Floyd comes out of this fight with positive press is if he absolutely annihilates Conor McGregor. He has to absolutely annihilate him, and he has to absolutely give him no chance of any inkling of a moment in the fight. If Floyd absolutely annihilates McGregor, then Floyd comes out with positive press.
But if Conor even has certain moments in the fight and still loses, people will talk more about McGregor than Mayweather after this fight, because this is Mayweather’s domain. He’s supposed to dominate. Conor is not supposed to do anything, so anything Conor achieves in this fight is positive for him.
Malignaggi’s belief that McGregor would stay in boxing with a win would depend on the UFC stepping aside, and their contract with McGregor prohibits prizefighting without permission. And the UFC’s permission to retire from MMA to make a career isn’t likely.
