Mayweather vs McGregor: The boxing world is laughing at Conor McGregor, says Paulie Malignaggi
Written by News on 22/08/2017
Paulie Malignaggi says that the boxing world is laughing at Conor McGregor as he gave his account of what happened in their infamous sparring sessions.
Former two-weight world champion Malignaggi, who retired from the ring earlier this year, quit McGregor’s training camp after photos appeared on social media suggesting that he had been knocked down during sparring.
The American has quashed those rumours and also delivered a verbal jab at ‘The Notorious’ ahead of McGregor’s Las Vegas showdown with Floyd Mayweather this weekend, to be shown live on Sky Sports Box Office.
Speaking exclusively to Sky Sports, Malignaggi said: "McGregor gets angry because boxing has not accepted him, but would an MMA fighter accept a boxer walking into their sport claiming that they are the best when he’s never done it in his life.
"That’s the situation with McGregor in boxing, he is being laughed at and it is only getting worse as each video of a public workout or him shadow boxing is released.
"It’s been a wild ride the last couple of weeks and every time I think I’m no longer part of the storm, another photo or video comes out.
"Part of me thinks that he has done this on purpose, maybe he wants to figure out a new opponent after the Mayweather fight if he wants to stay in this sport.
"He maybe even planned to make me disgruntled before we even got in the ring, I had situations where I would show up to the gym just to be told I wasn’t allowed to train and I was put in a house that didn’t even have cable TV.
"Was it all done to create trash talk, he has been dragging this all along for some reason."
Despite being out of shape, Malignaggi went twelve rounds with the Irish UFC star, but strongly denies ‘insecure’ rumours that he was knocked down by McGregor during the session.
"They want you to believe this was a knockdown and people can choose to be deceived but then they can only be mad at themselves when they realise the truth.
"Nothing landed in that exchange. You can think something landed, but it is clearly not the case, a passing graze is not enough to get a knockdown.
"The added footage of punches landed were edited in from the previous round and I always told people that he had a good couple of rounds before.
"I was tired and out of shape, the fact that he’s not ashamed that a guy came in off the couch and done twelve rounds shows you where his confidence levels are really at.
"I had done the bare minimum beforehand just to show up in a little bit of shape as I assumed the training camp would be like mine or other boxers where each sparring partner does four to six rounds, not twelve.
"Edit this video how you want, you’re trying too hard to prove what. I’ve sparred with hundreds of champions and very rarely does a knockdown happen, especially with the bigger gloves and headgear.
"He is living in this alternate reality where he can punch and hurt people and sometimes I ask myself is he really that stupid, is it an act, why try to prove something that didn’t happen.
"Between me and him, we know the truth. Joe Cortez instantly said no knockdown and look at the people ringside, they would surely react differently at something so rare in a gym. Is McGregor that insecure?"
(c) Sky News 2017: Mayweather vs McGregor: The boxing world is laughing at Conor McGregor, says Paulie Malignaggi
