Conor McGregor’s knockout on Saturday night looks to have been a blessing in disguise as ‘The Notorious’ was dropped like a hot brick by Manny Pacquiao.
The pair were due to fight later this year in an exhibition boxing match. That idea is now on the scrapheap.
McGregor looked a shell of his former self recently as Dustin Poirier laid him out in the second round. In the process, the Irishman lost a colossal fight with Pacquiao.
The way Poirier was able to take McGregor out begs the question, ‘what would Manny Pacquiao have done to him?’
It could have been a lot worse if Pacquiao was in the ring with McGregor that night. Pacquiao would have annihilated the UFC star.
People lived in cloud cuckoo land if they thought McGregor could even hang with guys like Floyd Mayweather and Pacquiao.
Mayweather, who hadn’t scored a bonafide knockout for a decade before he faced McGregor in a 2017 money-making exercise, carried his hapless opponent before taking him out in ten.
Utterly bereft of boxing skills at the top-level, McGregor not only lost that fight, but he’s also never seemed the same since.
Taking home a check for almost a hundred million dollars can do that to a fighter. Any fighter, for that matter. That is what makes Mayweather and Pacquiao different.
Legends of our time, the pair have both won vast amounts inside the ropes. But their ambition remained undiminished.
Sadly for McGregor, that hasn’t been the case, and his boxing exploits have been nothing but a smokescreen.
Those kinds of mismatches continue to be the norm in our sport, though, as Pay Per View money remains on the tablet for a less-than-acceptable product.
MANNY PACQUIAO PPV
Some oblivious purchasers are happy to fork out their hard-earned cash for promotion, rather than actual entertainment, something that should have stopped with the Mayweather vs. Pacquiao fight itself.
Pacquiao fought with an injury, a scenario that hindered the fight being the spectacle it promised.
But McGregor, even when fully fit, is not as up to scratch as an injured ‘Pacman.’ Therefore, he has to consider his future.
As Mayweather put it over the weekend, ‘he can’t even win in his own sport’ and need to think carefully about what comes next.
UFC is an unforgiving discipline. Does McGregor need the money that badly?
Thousands of memes doing the rounds on social media would suggest not.
WBN Editor Phil has over ten years of boxing news experience. Follow WBN on Twitter @WorldBoxingNews.
