Boxing news: Floyd Mayweather says he chose not to KO Conor McGregor early so they can have rematch, dismisses Manny Pacquiao speculation
Floyd Mayweather claimed he deliberately decided against knocking out Conor McGregor early in their first fight in order to set up a rematch.
The 50-0 retired boxing legend declared in November he will be working alongside UFC president Dana White to return this year and has now revealed he’s eyeing two bouts – against Conor McGregor, whom he beat in 2017, and Khabib Nurmagomedov.
Reflecting on the first McGregor bout, which he won by tenth-round knockout, Mayweather told : “For the Conor McGregor fight I didn’t really train.
“All I did was do push-ups and sit-ups, boxed a few times, hit the bag a few times.
“Training camp was in different places, sometimes I wouldn’t go to the gym for a week.
“I took it serious, but I wanted to have some fun in the fight and I wanted to entertain the people.
“You have to give the people a show, so I gave the people a show.
“If I wanted to go out there and f*** him up and blaze him right out the gate, I could’ve did that.
“But my thing is this, if I would’ve did that, then it wouldn’t be probably a part two.”
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Later in the conversation, Mayweather spoke more about his comeback plans.
He said: “Just this year alone, with the two fights on the table, the numbers are up there high.
“My numbers can be somewhere upwards of $600million. I even talked about fighting Khabib and Conor in the same day.
“I’d fight Khabib in the daytime and I’d fight Conor at night…
“You’ve gotta realise, I don’t fight boxers. I already proved to the world I’m the best at that.
“I don’t need to be on the pound-for-pound list. It’s no longer the pound-for-pound list, it’s the Mayweather-for-Mayweather list. I’ve surpassed that.”
Regarding a potential Manny Pacquiao rematch, Mayweather concluded: “I don’t know why they keep saying this.
“At the end of the day, he kept talking about how I was scared.
“He went and done a commercial, the ESPN commercial, told me I was scared and they was being disrespectful for years.
“It finally happened, he got cooked, now he’s begging for a rematch.
“My thing is this, if you get it done right the first time, you ain’t gotta do it again.”