After months of seemingly endless hype and at least three too many press conferences, Floyd Mayweather and Conor McGregor will finally step into the boxing ring on Saturday night. The entire sports world will be focused on T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas when the two meet, as the bout is expected to set or come close to all manner of records for PPV buys, revenue generated, and wagers placed on the fight.
While the event has captured the imagination of the casual fight fan there are plenty, particularly on the boxing side, that aren’t thrilled about the mega-fight. While public money has poured into sports books on the side of Conor McGregor to the point that Floyd Mayweather has plummeted from a -1100 favorite to as low as -500 at one point, there are few that expect the fight to be in any way competitive.
Mayweather and McGregor are the two best self-promoters in their respective sports. The spectacle they’ve built is second to none, but once they trade microphones for boxing gloves, there’s almost no way they can match the hype they’ve built.
Among those preparing for a disaster and embarrassment in the ring is legendary boxing trainer and ESPN analyst Teddy Atlas. Atlas spoke with Uproxx Sports during fight week about the event — he’s wary of even calling it a fight — and why fans shouldn’t be surprised when they’re upset at the in-ring product for being a lackluster, boring fight, just like they have been for so many of Mayweather’s bouts over the years. Atlas didn’t hold back in his criticism of the bout and concerns that it could very well turn into a sham that does damage to boxing’s credibility.
Have you ever seen anything like the build up or just the general spectacle that’s been built around this fight?
Yeah, I have, I have. I think the Pacquiao-Mayweather was similar. I think it’s going to wind up, I think that one’s going to make more money too. That’s probably a different thought than maybe a lot of people have, but I think at the end of the day it’s about the money obviously. This is a money thing. It’s always about money, I guess, but sometimes it’s also about the athletic effect. This is more about the money I believe and it was a way to, obviously, create that opportunity by capturing the imagination of the public with this kind of event. I think of it as an event more than as a real, actual fight. At the end of the day, who knows but I think that it probably won’t reach what Pacquiao and Mayweather reached but it’s similar. I mean everyone’s talking about it. It’s crossing over to more than just one market where people that don’t normally watch fights are talking about getting together on Saturday night at somebody’s house and watching.
I also, you know what I’m hearing a little bit more too, I’m hearing a little more of this, obviously, this can be important to the bottom line. I’m hearing more people say that, “Well, I’m not buying it but a friend of mine is buying it so I’m going to go watch.” I’m hearing a little more of that than I heard in the Pacquiao-Mayweather. Despite of what you might be led to believe, because the frenzy nature of the promotion and everything that’s swirling around, but anyway that’s the way I’m seeing it.
With regards to the fight, I think you’re right in noting it as an event more than a fight. What was your initial reaction when you heard that it was actually going to happen?
Money grab, you know, just smart people finding a way to make a lot of money, and taking advantage of the opportunity of capturing the moment with the imagination of people. To me, it’s like another Spiderman movie coming out, you know. Spiderman movies or Marvel comic Hulk movies come out, people want to be entertained and you could have a movie down the street playing that’s got the greatest plot in the world and they’re probably going to, there’s going to be a longer line for the Hulk movie. It’s sort of the nature of society to a certain extent, and I think they played it. They played it pretty, you know, they understood that they could play it.
There’s a reason why people watch Jerry Springer. They have an audience and I wouldn’t know better than anyone else, but you choose what you want to watch. I don’t want to watch that, but there is, we all have … There’s a morbid curiosity, the saying goes so long, how long have you heard people say, “Well, if there’s a, God forbid, a car accident,” and unfortunately there is every day on the highway, and you’re going to have a traffic jam, people that are going to be rubber necking to watch, to see, to peek, and I think that they kind of tapped into that to a certain extent. It’s that morbid curiosity, what’s going to happen? Is something crazy going to happen? Is Conor McGregor going to kick him in the head? Look, you have both audiences. You have the boxing and MMA. I believe the MMA is much more frenzied and going to line up to buy this more so, and even come out here more so than the boxing audience, I would expect.
Floyd, for years, has been as good as it gets at building these kind of spectacles and making people think he’s going to come out. He’s been talking so much about how he’s going to come forward and those sort of things. Do you believe that at all?
No. This is what I do for a living. This is the only thing I did my whole life, so I have to base my thoughts on concrete things that I know from experience, and I can rely on. Listen, I did the [Terence] Crawford fight the other night, for example. This is kind of a good example. I did the Crawford fight the other night from Nebraska, for ESPN, and we got a good rating. You know, he’s a hell of a fighter. It’s a real fight. He destroyed the guy, but as I was doing the preliminary fights, the lead up fights on the broadcast, there was a young prospect, and I was kind of asked, he’s got an opportunity, you know we were pointing out the facts of the fight, and the way it was progressing, and that he had an opportunity to dominate this guy and he did. I mean he’s a kid, he won a silver medal in the Olympics. He’s got a lot of talent. He’s young, but he has much more talent than the guys that they’re putting him with right now. That’s how you do it.
He was in there with a guy, and don’t hold me to it, but I’m going to say the guy’s record was 3, 2 and 2, and he had been knocked out one time, but you know, you get the idea. These, so he’s supposed to dominate this guy and after watching it for 2 minutes, I understood what this prospect was. He’s a talented kid, but his temperament was to be careful, conservative, thoughtful, to think and to think a lot, and to be defensive-minded, and not to take chances, not to be, I think the word I actually used is not to be a seek and destroy guy. That’s what you are. You are what you are. You can have all the talent in the world and different aspects of talent, but the driver, the car can be the Ferrari and we could say that this kid, and we can say Mayweather has Ferrari talent, but the way it’s used is up to the driver. The driver’s your temperament.
In my world that’s the driver, your temperament, what you are, what’s in your mind, in your soul, how you’re made up, and that’s comprised of all the experiences you’ve had in your life. Floyd is a careful guy. That’s what he is. That’s what he’s always going to be. It’s not going to change. Is there a minute that he could go forward and take a look for a minute? Yeah, but if you’re believing that’s going to be suddenly his consistent way and mode of behavior, you’re wrong because it’s not him. That’s not how he approaches things. That’s not what’s inside him. That’s not his temperament. No, that’s … He’s saying what he has to say as a promoter, but he’s … It’s already been proven throughout his 20 years of boxing, at the end of the day what you’re going to get. He’s going to take the air out of the ball. That’s what he’s going to do.
In your opinion, is there anything Conor, I’m not even talking about winning the fight because I think that’s as far fetched as any. Is there anything he can do to even make this competitive or interesting in the ring, as a viewer?
Here is what it comes down to. I’ve been in boxing, like I said, my whole life, so I live in a practical world. You have to. You have to live in a realistic world if you’re in boxing. You don’t move your head, you get hit. That’s realistic. That’s the world I live in, so when you come at it from there, for me, I got to look at tangible things. The tangible thing says Floyd gets old. Floyd gets ancient. Floyd becomes 100 years old. He’s 40 years old, hasn’t fought in 2 years. Even then, I still think he probably wins and that probably destroys the promotion for this fight, but he’s 40 years old, he hasn’t fought. Let’s really look at tangible things instead of listening to the promotion.
40 years old, hasn’t fought in 2 years, and he took the fight on quick notice. You know what? That could be a recipe for disaster if you’re not fighting a guy who doesn’t belong in the ring. He’s fighting a guy that doesn’t belong in the ring. He really is. I tell you, I’m not knocking MMA and I’m not knocking Conor McGregor. Matter of fact, I’ll go a step further, Conor McGregor is a genius, he’s a genius. He really is. He’s a genius promoter and all power to him that he’s put himself in this position to grab this kind of money, but I could name 50 C-level, run of the mill, journeymen boxers that would kill him, that would win easily, easily.
Again, not good for the promotion, but that’s a reality. They would box circles around him. C-level guys that have, journeymen guys that can go the distance with good fighters but they don’t win. They don’t have great records, you know, they would never be able to get a big payday, but they’re solid, journeymen guys. They would run rings around him in a boxing ring, not in the octagon, we know that, but in the boxing ring.
That’s what you’ve got. Look, maybe plan B, hopefully it’s not plan A, but maybe plan B for McGregor is, and I’m being serious. He, maybe if he’s getting embarrassed or whatever, he feels he’s not doing well, maybe he goes to MMA rules and he gets him on, he gets to him and he gets him on the floor and he proclaims himself king of whatever. … Now look, we understand that he would have been disqualified and he loses technically, but in his world he wins. People will say, “Teddy, what do you mean he wins?” Well, he wins, his brand goes through the roof, that’s the world we live in. Hate to say it, but that’s the world we live in. He’ll put his hands up in the air, proclaiming himself the champion of the empire, whatever he wants to call it, and people will think he won. People will think he won. Now he’ll be fined, but so what? Can you imagine the money he’ll make on the back end of that?
I mean he’d still make a boat load on the front end much less the back end.
Yeah, exactly, so I mean, look, is that a possibility? That’s a possibility. The other possibility, I think, it’s probably more likely, is that you’re going to get a long, dragged out, boring event. Not what’s being promoted because when you really, and here’s kind of an X factor to the view of this whole thing, the overview of this whole thing if you get down again, to real things. Even though they’re saying that McGregor, you know of course, are pushing it forward, that most of the people that are buying it, they want to see action. They’re not buying it for anything else, and they want to see explosions.
I mean they go to these movies, things blow up, so they’re going to, they’re putting forward that McGregor and his only chance, and this and that, what he’s going to do is he’s going to come forward, but let me tell you something. Same thing I told you about Floyd. I did my homework because this is what I get paid to do, so I had to look at MMA fights. I don’t look at it. I’m the first one to admit I’m not a guy that’s involved in the MMA and Verse, and so I did, I got those tapes and I looked at his fights, and do you know what? Every one of his biggest fights, McGregor, he was careful. He was intellectual, which is great.
He was conservative and he was Floyd Mayweather. Yeah, that’s the crazy thing. No one else, of course, has pointed this out, but he was Floyd Mayweather. He took a step back and got the guy to come in and reach and he counter punched. Again, that’s his temperament. That I realized. After I watched that I said, “Teddy, that’s what he is.” That’s where his success has been, so are you going to tell me that someone’s going to put a gun to his head and he’s going to go forward? I don’t buy it. I mean in spots, maybe, okay, I got you, but throughout the main part of the fight, as far as really the essence of what is in his mind and heart that he’s going to look to carry through in that ring, I believe he’ll be careful.
He’s a smart guy, smart promoter. He doesn’t want to get himself blown up. I could see this fight, off of what I just said, of what I put forward as my thoughts of why I’m saying this, I could see this fight being dragged out and going some rounds. Even though it shouldn’t, in real true expectations of talent, and their perspective crafts of boxing, it shouldn’t, but because of the nature of Floyd, because in the nature of Conor, there’s a chance that both guys will give each other reprieves from action, from threat. If that happens, then people will be pretty disappointed again like they were in the Pacquiao-Floyd fight.
Again, when people were disappointed in the Pacquiao-Floyd, I laughed at them. I really did.
What did they expect?
Yeah, I wasn’t sympathetic at all. I said, “Wait a minute, wait a minute. You’ve been following Floyd for what,” at that point it was 18 years, whatever. I said, “You’ve been following Floyd and you expected a burning house? You expected a scintillating fight? Are you serious?”
If you wanted an exciting fight, you go watch Brandon Rios or somebody, you know?
I agree and to that point, I’ll tell you this, here’s the funny thing. Of course the reason why this fight was put forward was because of Floyd’s and McGregor’s promotional abilities, and also because of what they’ve done in their perspective careers. We understand that. Floyd’s undefeated and he’s got this image that he can exploit, and I think that’s a fair word, in these kind of events. Of course Conor has put himself out there to create this imagery that he can fit right in there and they can be each other’s foils for this kind of promotion, but … That’s why the money’s there, but here’s the funny thing. If you think, you could probably pick 10 of Floyd’s opponents that have lost, obviously, to Floyd.
They’ve all lost to him, and I’ll start with Canelo. You could pick 10 of them, put them in the ring in this fight instead of Floyd and I guarantee the fight goes 1 or 2 rounds. That’s the funny thing. People never look at that. It probably goes 1 or 2 rounds because they will be aggressive, because they will truly, truly exploit the weaknesses of a guy who doesn’t belong in the ring, in the boxing ring. They will truly bring forward those weaknesses and immediately act on them, and exploit them and get McGregor out of there, but Floyd won’t do that. See that’s the thing. That’s the chance that McGregor has is that he wins by losing, that he survives, he loses, he loses the fight, but he survives and this way, he does more than people expected. In that way, he wins. That’s what scares me.
That it goes to a decision?
At the end of the day, not just a decision but any of that realm of what I just described. The decision scares me, yeah, it always does in boxing and I don’t trust the judges at boxing. I don’t trust the sport. I trust the sport. I love the sport. I love it. I don’t love the administrators of the sport. They’re corrupt. I don’t need anyone else to have a talk with me about it. I know what I know and what I’ve seen, but what really worries me and scares me is being a boxing lifer, and I am concerned that people are taking Floyd as the vintage Floyd. He’s not the vintage Floyd. It’s impossible for him to be that at 40 and 2 years removed, so at the end of the day, if this goes beyond expectations and McGregor does a little better because of all those things, I’m afraid of the damage it does to the sport. I understand everyone’s pockets are going to be lined, but I don’t think about that. I think about the sport. I think about the other fighters coming up, that I know what they put into this sport to get there, and to try to get there. It concerns me. That’s what concerns me, that it would damage the credibility of boxing, not MMA.
MMA is getting a free ride here. They’re getting a free ride here. They can only get, they can only be helped, only can be helped. Boxing, boxing, the sport of boxing is the one that’s in danger here.
