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Boxing

09th Sep 2017

Startling claim made about Floyd Mayweather’s preparation for Conor McGregor

He wasn't taking 'The Notorious' all that seriously

Darragh Murphy

Floyd Mayweather took it very easy during his training camp for Conor McGregor.

The legend found it rather straightforward when he welcomed ‘The Notorious’ to the ring for his boxing debut last month and, apparently, he was never even slightly worried about the threat posed by the UFC lightweight champion.

According to Mayweather’s father, Floyd Mayweather Sr., the 40-year-old simply didn’t train for the August 26 Money Fight in Las Vegas.

Throughout his career, Mayweather cultivated a reputation for matchless hard work, often taking to the desert heat in the dead of night to get his roadwork done.

However eyebrows were raised in his most recent camp when the defensive master was spotted at his gentleman’s club at 3am on the eve of the of the weigh-ins for the lucrative contest and was seen eating fast food at the beginning of fight week.

Once the fight came around, Mayweather moved to 50-0 by stopping his Irish opponent in the 10th round but Mayweather Sr. has insisted that the bout would have been over much earlier had his son actually trained.

“Floyd would have stopped [McGregor] a lot earlier if he worked even a little bit,” Mayweather Sr. told Phillyvoice.com, via BoxingScene.com. “Floyd did not train for that fight – he literally whupped that boy, that’s what he did.

“Just imagine if my son would have prepared and would have trained the way he [normally] would for a fight, he would have stopped [McGregor] even sooner.

“What the world saw was only 50% of what my son is capable of doing. Yes, you can say it – it was like he literally came off the street to beat that man. That’s how good my son is. That’s basically it.

“I used to run with my son, but we haven’t ran together in a long time. As far as I’m concerned, he didn’t run for this fight. Floyd didn’t put all of what Floyd could do in the McGregor fight.”

Mayweather clearly looked to have lost a step in his 50th professional outing, having taken more than two years out of the fight game, but it was still a routine performance for him against a debutant.

And another member of Mayweather’s training camp, who chose to remain anonymous, backed up the legend’s father’s claims about training.

“Floyd hit the speed bag or did a light run,” the unnamed source from Mayweather’s camp said. “But he spent more time promoting the fight and at his businesses than preparing for McGregor. There’s no way around it, Floyd is a genetic freak.

“He’s been fighting so long that things just come naturally to him. All this social media stuff about McGregor going 10 rounds with the best in the world is bullshit. It’s actually the other way around – a 50% version of Floyd Mayweather came off the street and pounded one of the world’s best MMA fighters, and hardly trained to do it. It says how much better Floyd is than McGregor.”

Yeah, better at boxing.