So last night I watched the Mayweather McGregor fight and I have to say I walked away feeling like I watched a decent fight and was thoroughly entertained which is more than I can say for the Mayweather Pacquiao fight and a lot of the other big boxing cards we'd seen lately.
Now I hadn't been paying super close attention to all the hub bub leading up to the fight and hadn't really seen McGregors boxing style much if at all so that was the most surprising thing to me. He has a very awkward style. It's almost like a cross between the Notre Dame fighting Irish mascots old school Irish Boxing stance crossed with a "crane" style martial arts style, and a kangaroo style jab. You could tell it definitely took Floyd some time to get used to.
So Floyd Mayweather while extremely talented and extremely quick, typically isn't the most exciting boxer to watch. He's not a very aggressive fighter and he's not a power puncher.
That's kind of how the first several rounds went. McGregor throwing a lot of jabs and Mayweather just kind of sitting back. At one point in the first or second round I think the punch count was something like McGregor 36 Mayweather 4.
While I don't think it would be fair to say McGregor "dominated" the first few rounds, as like I said it was more jabs than power punches, I will say that McGregor definately was the aggressor and controlled the tempo of the early rounds.
It wasn't until the later rounds that Mayweather looked like his real stuff. It wasn't until the later rounds we saw Mayweathers speed and again while he's not a power puncher, it wasn't til the later rounds we saw the power in his punches start to come out.
I'd be curious to know if Mayweather was just playing with McGregor for those first few rounds or whether he truly was thrown off a bit by his style and by McGregor bringing the fight to him and he was sitting back trying to get his bearings.
One thing that really shocked me was how McGregor went from being so in control of the fight, and looked full of energy to being so dead so quickly. In the last round Mayweather did hit McGregor with a few good shots that rocked his headback a little bit, but again nothing that I really would have expected to rock McGregor.
In round 9, Mayweather his McGregor good a few times but it was really amazing to see McGregor from being so with it and so in control to literally falling apart and not keeping his hands in front of his face and not even defending himself.
I really didn't think McGregor was going to make it out of round 9, however when he did I thought the rest between rounds would allow him to gain his composure back and thought he'd at the very least be able to take it the full distance and to a decision.
When they came out in round 10, McGregor again wasn't even defending himself and you pretty much knew the ref was going to call the fight.
After the fight what was kind of surprising was how clear and with it McGregor was. There was no sign of that dazed guy who stopped defending himself in round 9 and he even said he was just fatigued, he wasn't punch drunk, he says that's just how he is and he comes back from it.
It was good to see both McGregor and Mayweather be good sports at the end, however I was a little disapointed with McGregor. McGregor who I've always thought was very gracious after a loss, while he did give Mayweather props for fighting a good fight, he made some comments about Mayweather doesn't punch that hard, he's not that fast and said he just got tired and kind of tried to take away from Mayweathers victory.
In listening to some of the chatter about the fight after the fight what I think probably happenned for McGregor is a combination of two things. First, McGregor isn't used to going that long or fighting for that long a period of time, UFC fights don't run that many minutes.
The other thing one announcer said which makes a lot of sense is when a boxer gets stunned by a punch there's certain things they do, grabbing, dancing around, avoiding, etc to make it through a round so they can once again compose themselves. McGregor who obviously doesn't have a ton of experience in the boxing ring isn't used to the same tactics for surviving a round in boxing as he is in UFC.
In UFC there would be more grappling and holding trying to wait out the end of a round where as in boxing it's a bit of a different strategy.
Anyhow, all in all I walked away from the fight thinking it was a pretty entertaining fight. McGregors unique style was fun to watch and while sometimes Mayweather fights can be a bit boring, McGregor took the fight to him pretty much the entire 10 rounds and it was a pretty action packed fight.
What did you think?