Conor McGregor may have moved on from a potential Floyd Mayweather rematch in the UFC, but that doesn’t mean Floyd is done toying with the idea of an MMA fight. In fact, he’s only getting more serious as time goes on. You can discount some earlier photos of Mayweather in a cage as part of a marketing scheme for his sponsors, but now we’ve got UFC welterweight champion Tyron Woodley revealing he’s agreed to train Mayweather in the ways of the Octagon.
“Floyd Mayweather is interested in taking a mixed martial arts bout, maybe a few of them,” Woodley told TMZ Sports. “So who better than ‘The Chosen One’ to teach him the ropes on how to get off the ropes and get in the cage? I saw him at the Jordan party during All-Star Weekend and we started chatting about training MMA. And we decided hey, let’s connect, let’s hook up in Vegas and do some training. Get him ready for MMA.”
“Y’all think it’s a joke, but think about this: Floyd Mayweather is one of the best strikers of all time. How many guys are there in the UFC that can’t wrestle and can’t grapple and consider themselves a stand up fighter. If they have to stand across from one of the greatest strikers of all time, they’re gonna be in a world of smoke.”
As for how Woodley would get the boxing legend up to speed, he planned on keeping it to the fundamentals.
“First thing we work on is kicks, blocking the kicks,” he said. “There’s no point in him trying to learn how to kick. … Secondly, defending takedowns. If he’s able to evade punches at a fraction of a second, make people look stupid and miss a million times, then he can learn wrestling defense.”
It wouldn’t even take Tyron to long to impart all of this knowledge.
“For the kicks it would take 2-3 weeks to get comfortable with the kicks,” he said. “I would say total, all in all, maybe two and a half months.”
That’s a pretty optimistic timeline, but Mayweather has proven himself to be a pretty phenomenal athlete. He may not be ready to face Conor McGregor in that time frame (or ever, realistically), but someone like CM Punk? Now there’s a fight Mayweather could potentially win with Tyron Woodley in his corner.
