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McGregor Says He Concussed Malignaggi In Sparring, Paulie Scoffs At the Boast
MIDNIGHT UPDATE: UFC bossman Dana White tossed lighter fluid on the blaze when he released snippets of footage on IG, showing some sparring between his Irish kingpin and retired pugilist Paul Malignaggi.
The angles aren’t conclusive but we see Paulie going down. That was during round 12 of their second and last spar session, Paulie told me, and indeed, he admits he was tired.
Another quickie clip shows McGregor landing a couple shots, including a decent straight left, and doing some rabbit punching.
They had a foot tangle, righty versus lefty, Paulie recalls of the mini-clip where he went to the mat, and there was a push/shove involved. No one live on site was calling that a knockdown, he stated. “Nice spin on things for them,” he said. “The vid cuts out because I got up talking shit.”
He again challenged White and company to show rounds 1-12, and that will bear out the New Yorker’s version of events. Or, what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas, except for select cherry-picked tidbits, I guess…
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Conor McGregor did a workout for media this afternoon in Las Vegas, and showed off his form hitting a bunch of different bags. His form, to the eyes of boxing folk used to seeing a certain smoothness from fighters booked to scrap with Floyd Mayweather, looked iffy in many minds. His mouth, though, that element of his game was as usual spot on.
The 29 year old Dubliner, the UFC’s top drawing card and a shit talker extraordinaire, was asked about how he planned to fight Mayweather. He expected, he said to knock him out in two, or no more than four rounds. Then he was asked about the kerfuffle in the last week with Paul Malignaggi, the ex boxer and current Showtime analyst who jetted from Conor’s Vegas camp after two sparring sessions.
Conor pulled no punches on Paulie, who he said he kind of liked, but left camp because he got his tail kicked. “It showed the weakness in his character,” the UFCer said of the Brooklyn bred boxer.
Paulie was “badly concussed,” Conor alleged to a room packed with media, and stumbling after McGregor gave him the business. He “got his ass whupped” and that is why he left camp under a cloud, the Irishman maintained. The pasting the MMAer put on him dented his ego, he continued.
Backtracking…They did eight rounds their first session, and Paulie gave Conor decent marks. “McGregor is no dummy,” he told me. Then, Paulie flew from Vegas to NY to work a Showtime show, the Adrien Broner v Mikey Garcia card at Barclays Center July 29. After that, he jetted back to Vegas. On Tuesday, Aug. 1, they did 12 rounds. “Lot of violence,” Paulie told ESPN’s Brett Okamoto. On Aug 3, Paulie departed the Conor camp after photos were leaked which inplied that Conor had decked Paulie and sent him to the mat. Paulie cried foul and said that the implication was false, that he’d been shoved.
Now, the beef is elongated, with McGregor taking it up a notch and alleging that his hands put a hurting on the 36 year old boxer to the point that he was concussed.
I messaged Paulie Saturday evening, after the third All Access episode on Showtime ran, and viewers saw a reference to the difference of opinion and McGregor reacting to hearing that Malignaggi had publicly disputed his version of their sessions.
“Hahaha, c’mon! You saw him work out today (during the media workout at his camp). Draw your own conclusion, your eyes don’t lie to you, right? Does he even look like he belongs in the same ring with anyone with any remote boxing ability? I will leave you with that,” Malignaggi told me. “The fact that I showed up in half shape off a plane and went 12 rounds with him tells you all you need to know. I show up like that to a camp of say an Errol Spence or a Keith Thurman, am I even going four rounds? Under those conditions and off a cross country flight? I will leave you with that answer, me and Conor went 12 last Tuesday under those conditions.”
Message? There was no concussion…
“I rest my case, let him edit videos how he wants,” the ex boxer continued. “It took them ten days to edit three minutes out of a total 60 minutes of action. You saw him work out today and what he looks like. I don’t have to defend myself, the obvious is now common sense!”
