While Floyd Mayweather Jr.’s superior boxing prowess was on display on Saturday night, another major factor for Conor McGregor’s loss was fatigue. It has been his problem since he fought Nate Diaz at UFC 196 more than a year ago.
With a little more time to mull it over, along with a few swigs of his own brand of Irish whiskey, McGregor went on to assess his performance at the post-fight press conference. There, he admitted that he does need to work on his conditioning but reiterated that he should have been given a chance to fight through the end of the tenth round, at least.
“I think fatigue, there’s a patch somewhere in the middle of fights, even with the Diaz 2 fight,” McGregor said. “I have this patch where I must overcome, I get a little wobbly. But it’s more fatigue.”
“If you look at the Diaz 2 fight, I came through that, came back round four and round five,” he continued. “I would’ve liked to see the end of round ten and see where it brought us. But, (Mayweather is) a hell of a competitor, switched it up, kept the pressure.”
Some other noteworthy moments of the fight were during the times when McGregor was able to take Mayweather’s back, which in MMA, puts him at a great advantage. But they were fighting under Queensberry rules, and it took him a while to realize that these attempts at seemingly getting the edge were futile.
“Floyd’s frames were nice,” McGregor said. “When he chose his shots and he smothers, he frames, and early on, when he was framing at me, I was trying to shock him and take his back. But midway through the fight when I had his back, the referee was just resetting us in the middle, and somewhere in the middle of all that, I was like ‘I’m using valuable energy here to get to this man’s back, and then we’re being reset to go again.’ So it kind of flustered me a little bit and he was able to capitalize on it.”
“He’s very composed, picks his shots very well, bounces shots off himself very well, and hides himself well. I believe he was hurt a few times, but he kept his composure, he doesn’t show it.”
Mayweather defeated McGregor via TKO at 1:05 of the tenth round.
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