It's still strange to see how many people don't seem to get what they watched last Saturday night.
Conor McGregor deserves a lot of credit for landing this fight, taking his preparations seriously and committing to trying to win given his limited resources in boxing skill and experience. What he shouldn't be given credit for is his performance -- for "lasting" 10 rounds with a historically elite fighter (who is no longer elite).
The truth is McGregor was merely a prop in a perfectly executed piece of theater. He didn't survive 10 rounds with Floyd Mayweather, he was carried for 10 rounds by Mayweather. Until Mayweather had enough and stopped the fight.
Let's start with a basic observation. It appears McGregor did not learn much about boxing during his training camp. He did not learn how to throw a punch. He doesn't know how to start the motion in his legs and hips and transfer his body weight through the punch. He doesn't have even average power in the ring. He also did not have any grasp of the basic rules. It was quite shocking to hear McGregor admit in the postfight press conference that he was "using valuable energy here to get to this man's back and we're just being reset." Was he under the impression that he could throw punches to an opponent's back? Not to mention all the holding of the head and rabbit punches. It makes one wonder what the point was of having referee Joe Cortez attend McGregor's training camp leading up to the fight.
But the ruse gets pretty obvious when one observes the simple things Floyd chose not to do.
For one, after deciding he wanted to spend the fight in McGregor's chest, Mayweather rarely bothered trying the elementary things boxers do to get inside. Namely, regularly jabbing, feinting and slipping. Simply walking forward with your hands up and your chin tucked while hardly throwing, as Mayweather did, is not how boxers close down distance.
Secondly, Mayweather didn't cut off the ring. Fighters get aggressively offensive for a few reasons: They realize their opponent needs time and space to work and they want to deny that time and space. They realize their opponent is tiring and looking for ways to rest and they want to deny opportunities for rest. Or, they realize their opponent doesn't have enough power to hurt them and so they want to get in range to get off their offense because they're not worried about being hit.
All three were true in Mayweather's case. He indeed walked McGregor down, but he did it in a way that was incredibly amateurish and inefficient. He literally followed McGregor around the ring in a circle. That's not how you apply pressure. You pursue at angles, move to where your opponent is going to be -- cut off the ring in order to trap your target. Mayweather merely trailed after McGregor, growing increasingly offensive as McGregor grew fatigued.
In other words, to believe what you were seeing is to believe Floyd all of a sudden no longer knew the basics of boxing.
lol:
