Off the back of his historic boxing debut against Floyd Mayweather, UFC star Conor McGregor has some interesting praise for the legendary puncher.
Sharing the ring with multi-division world champion Floyd Mayweather in his first pro boxing match back in 2017, Conor McGregor ditched the Octagon for the ring in a historic crossover bout.
And finding himself on the wrong side of a stoppage loss, McGregor was finished with strikes for the first time in his combat sports career.
But afterwards, despite his terse pre-fight exchanges with Mayweather, the Dubliner issued some surprise praise for his ability in the ring.
Conor McGregor suggested Floyd Mayweather could flourish in MMA
Much of the pre-fight discourse between McGregor and Mayweather took the course of how the Michigan boxer would fare if he were to enter the Octagon.
McGregor, who had held the lightweight title in the UFC at the time of his fight with Mayweather on this day in 2017, was confident in the fact he would stop the unbeaten boxer with ease in mixed martial arts.
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However, after his tenth-round TKO defeat, the Crumlin striker claimed if Mayweather was to ever set foot in a cage for combat, he had some “tools” to help him prevail.
“I always told him (Mayweather) he was not a fighter but a boxer,” McGregor wrote on Instagram in 2017. “But sharing the ring with him, he is certainly a solid fighter.
“Strong in the clinch. Great understanding of frames and head position,” McGregor continued. “He has some very strong tools he could bring into an MMA game for sure.”
And off the back of his fight with Mayweather, McGregor would return to mixed martial arts, scoring the biggest fight of his gleaming career in the sport.
Conor McGregor fought Khabib Nurmagomedov after Floyd Mayweather
In what will go down as one of the most iconic two-fight stints in combat history, after his loss to Mayweather, McGregor would return to the UFC to take on the undefeated Russian star Khabib Nurmagomedov.
Fresh from his own blistering knockout win over Eddie Alvarez to scoop the lightweight crown, McGregor was stripped of his belt to pursue a fight with Mayweather, with Nurmagomedov taking his place as champion in the during that time.
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But a year after his loss to Mayweather, McGregor took on the Dagestani star in arguably the biggest grudge fight in the history of the UFC, leading to a long, drawn-out rivalry which remains to this very day.