McGregor: How Mayweather beat me

ESPN’s Brett Okamoto interviewed Conor McGregor half an hour after the TKO loss to Floyd Mayweather, and Notorious detailed what went wrong Saturday night.

“I’ve been watching highlights, trying to figure out what’s what,” replied McGregor. The UFC lightweight champion describes himself as obsessed, and this was yet another example. He wasn’t devastated, he wasn’t complaining, he wasn’t showering, he wasn’t drinking, he was watching the fight, trying to learn where it went wrong.

I think I smoked him in the early rounds,” said McGregor. “I was pretty handily whooping him in the early rounds. He then changed his style – he puts his hands up and came down low. He put his forehead on the chest, and started getting to work. I wasn’t prepared; I didn’t anticipate that.

“I had him like that,” said McGregor, dropping into Mayweather’s characteristic side stance that allows him to fade and slip like no other. Then McGregor switched to a squared up, and added, “Or even like that at a distance. But he completely changed his style, and came forward. It threw me off.

“And he was composed in there. I wasted my punches on the gloves. It was just a composure issue. I don’t feel from a skill level… I felt alright in there. I feel like it was very close.

“I get that wobbly stage. Check me fights. When it gets into the deep waters, in that middle stage, where I get that wobbly stage, from fatigue. I wasn’t hurt. I wasn’t wobbled once. It was fatigue. Let me get to the corner, let me go down on a knee. Boxing’s a little bit different, so I don’t know.

“But my hat’s off. Fair play to him. He’s a composed man. You can give him nothing but respect. He took the shots early. And he TOOK shots early – I cracked him with a left hand and I saw him in a little bit of panic, but he stayed very, very calm. That’s his years of experience.”

“I didn’t go down. There was one shot that snapped the head back, and then the last shots were grazing. They hit me but they were grazing. They weren’t clean shots. The head didn’t snap back. They were like as I was turning.

“Let me get to the bell. And then if you’re not happy at the bell, then you can maybe pull me. … I don’t know what it is. It’s like a mental thing. It happened in the [second] Diaz fight too. I had a little stage. End of the second round, and then into the third. But look what happened in the fourth and the fifth – I came back. I overcome it. So I would have liked to get back into the corner.

“If that was MMA, the ref wants to see your f***ing nose hanging off your face before he’s even thinking of doing something like that. They’re doing it a little bit early we thought.”

There will be a chance to do it again.