One month removed from Conor McGregor’s we-still-can’t-believe-it-happened boxing match with Floyd Mayweather, and the Irish UFC star is still upset with the way their fight ended. As you may recall, McGregor was stopped in the 10th round by Mayweather after he got tired and Floyd started unleashing an endless combo of unanswered punches. It wasn’t much of a controversial stoppage by boxing standards, but it seemed rather premature to MMA fans.
McGregor unloaded his frustrations regarding the fight at ‘An Evening With Conor McGregor’ event in Scotland, noting that referee Robert Byrd is husband to controversial judge Adalaide Byrd, whose terrible scoring resulted in boxing’s other recent superfight Canelo vs. Golovkin resulting in a draw.
“The referee was a weird one now the more I look back on it,” McGregor said (quotes via MMA Fighting). “Especially after Adalaide Bird had that thing with the Canelo and GGG fight, that was her. Adalaide and Robert Byrd are husband and wife, that’s a bit weird, that’s when I started looking back on the fight.”
“Why did he not give [Mayweather] instruction? Why was he staring at me? He had a vendetta against me straight off the bat. Early exchanges in the tie up, instead of just separating he would reach around and pull me away. That takes energy away from me. I started getting … not paranoid, but I just started analyzing the whole thing a bit deeper. I felt like I got the short end of the stick here.”
The greatest injustice in his mind, though, was the way the fight ended.
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“I thought it was an early stoppage,” he said. “How the f**k can you stop a fight if there were no knockdowns or nothing previous? The round before that I almost had him dropped. I hurt him to the body in the round before. How the f**k can you stop it like that at the first sign of a wobble? You’ve got to let these fights go on.”
But McGregor does begrudgingly acknowledge that he lost … but only due to boxing’s limiting ruleset.
“I got beat. I got beat under that rule set. I’m not going to start giving off like that. I accepted the rules, and I was beat in the rules. Make no mistake, every time I took his back in that f**king fight and the referee separated us, in a real fight it’s done right there. That was the part for me that I had to get over the most.”
“I almost feel like I sold myself out. I put so many skills and so many shots in my back pocket for a pay check and big event and that’s been messing with my head a little bit.”
Fortunately for fans of his mixed martial arts skill set, McGregor sounds like he’s more interested now in legitimizing his lightweight belt than chasing a new money fight. That’s not to say he isn’t keeping his eye on a long list of potential opponents. Only one thing is for sure: Conor McGregor is nowhere near done fighting.
