There’s still a lot of things to work out before a highly anticipated Conor McGregor versus Floyd Mayweather boxing match is a done deal on paper. But that’s not stopping either party from starting to train for the fight.
On Floyd’s side, he’s brought on UFC fighter Kevin Lee to help emulate what McGregor may do in the ring. And on Conor’s side, he’s already training exclusively for Floyd. That’s according to his head coach and close friend John Kavanagh.
“In my mind, it’s on,” Kavanagh said in an interview with FOX Sports Australia (via MMAJunkie). “That’s the mentality we’re in. Like you said, there’s a lot of fingers in the pie on this one. There’s different promotions, different organizations, different commissions that are involved, but as far as I’m concerned, I really believe it’s going to happen this year, and that’s the mindset I have. Let the people in the suits worry about the paperwork. We’re training for it.”
For months, Mayweather versus McGregor seemed like nothing more than a publicity stunt cooked up by both fighters to raise their profiles. But then McGregor made it clear that it was the only fight he wanted, and just in the past few weeks his bosses at the UFC gave their blessing for the fight to happen — not surprising considering it could become the first billion dollar fight in the history of combat sports.
As for when it will happen, we have to hope Coach Kavanagh is right and it will go down before the end of the year. McGregor himself has been pushing for a September date, and Floyd seems to want things to go down sooner rather than later,suggesting June for the scrap.
Even if you think the whole affair is silly, there’s advantages to this going down fast: it gets Conor McGregor back into the cage, where he can finally defend his UFC belt against opponents he has a chance of beating.
