With Bellator 180 on the horizon, Chael Sonnen’s gift of gab is hitting every media outlet known to mankind because one thing the West Linn Gangster does better than fight is talk. So, X-Pac had Chael (and our very own Bill Hanstock) on his show to discuss the lead up to his fight with Wanderlei Silva and of course, the one thing that is on everyone’s mind — Floyd Mayweather vs. Conor McGregor.
It speaks volumes that Chael Sonnen, days from a grudge match years in the making against Wanderlei Silva, is being asked about McGregor fighting Mayweather. It seems like that fight is a black hole, sucking interest from everything that isn’t “Money” or Mystic Mac, and that’s probably because of the stakes. Floyd is 49-0 and coming out of retirement for what he probably perceives is an easy payday, while McGregor has nothing to prove, but wants his fists to cash the check his mouth wrote.
But the subtext of the fight is far more interesting than the casual viewer thinks. This isn’t just a money fight. McGregor, for all his crap talk, is representing MMA, which has been looked down upon by the boxing world for nearly two decades. Meanwhile, Mayweather’s fellow boxers believe he needs to utterly destroy McGregor or this fight means nothing. In fact, they think if Mayweather doesn’t dominate McGregor, boxing itself takes a major hit.
He may be on the MMA side, but Sonnen agrees:
Mayweather better win and he better do it really quickly and really dominantly. You got a guy who has never lost at boxing against a guy who has never boxed and if this story ends any other way than absolute destruction and the entire integrity of the sport of boxing takes a huge blow and they cannot afford that right now.
Boxing is actually in the best place its been in years, and GGG vs. Canelo is on the horizon, but yes, McGregor beating or even surviving Mayweather will, at the very least, give MMA fans who for some reason have a line drawn in the sand between the two sports, plenty of ammunition to mock those big-gloved stand up fighters.
