Following months of preparation and hype, the billion dollar mega-fight between Conor McGregor and Floyd Mayweather at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas certainly surpassed all expectations.

Much of the talk was of how quickly the fight would end, with both camps predicting that it would all be over inside of five rounds.

As it happened, the bout lasted 10, with McGregor and Mayweather putting in exceptional performances.

The 29-year-old Irishman came out of his corner the more aggressive fighter and seemed to have rattled the 49-0 veteran, and for three rounds, most of the noise was coming from Irish fans.

‘Money’ Mayweather found his range in the forth, however, and started to hand out serious punishment to McGregor for the next seven rounds.

In the end, hall of fame referee Robert Byrd stopped the fight midway through round 10, much to the dissatisfaction of McGregor, who said after the fight that he felt it had been stopped too early.

However, Darragh O'Carroll, a former ringside doctor, has told Tonic that light-weight MMA champion McGregor could have been suffering something much worse than fatigue.

"Fatigue may cause sluggish and slow movements, but does not cause the imbalance and poor coordination exhibited by McGregor in the 10th round,” O’Carroll explained.

“Being wobbly, in the setting of pugilistic trauma, will always be treated as the result of head trauma and not as fatigue.

"To let a fighter continue on would be grossly negligent."

Either way, the 29-year-old Irishman was not best pleased with how the fight ended and said at the time that he would have liked to keep going.

"I'd have liked to hit the floor. I'd have liked the ref ... there's a lot on the line here, he should have let me keep going, I thought.

"No one's taking these kinds of risks. So, f**k it, lay into me all you want. I'll take it on the chin. I'll take it wrapped around the neck on live TV. It's another day for me."

Regardless of McGregor’s protestations that he was fine to continue taking punishment from Mayweather, O’Carroll states that to let McGregor continue could have resulted in a serious head injury and fight referee Byrd was right to stop the fight in the 10th.

"Continuing the fight would have put McGregor at risk for continued head trauma, risking a future of chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or at worst, repetitive damage leading to a severe traumatic brain injury such as a brain bleed," O’Carroll concluded.

The International Journal of Psychiatry in Medicine states that dementia pugilistica causes sufferers to experience the following: "Declining mental ability, problems with memory, dizzy spells or lack of balance to the point of not being able to walk under one's own power for a short time and or Parkinsonism, or tremors and lack of coordination."

McGregor may not like it, but stopping the fight in the 10th might have stopped him suffering something considerably worse than fatigue.