While Conor McGregor put on a decent showing in the early rounds of his boxing fight against Floyd Mayweather, there's one thing the Irishman nor his team expected "Money" to do in the fight - walk him down.
The pair competed in what was scheduled to be a 12 round exhibition bout at 154 pounds while wearing eight ounce gloves. McGregor came out the gates aggressive and tagged Mayweather up for the first few rounds, seemingly taking the first three. The Irishman fatigued late in the fight and ate a series of unanswered shots that forced the referee to call the fight off. Although he wasn't able to get the job done against Mayweather, "Mystic Mac" has received a ton of praise for his performance.
McGregor's striking coach, Owen Roddy, recently joined The MMA Hour to talk about the fight and revealed the one thing the camp didn't prepare for against Mayweather. Roddy said that Mayweather ate McGregor's shots very well early on, but became flustered when the American began to walk "The Notorious One" down (quotes via MMA Fighting):
“I felt the game plan that we came up with and the strategy we had for the first four rounds was really good. Conor was doing well. It was a tight fight,” he told Ariel Helwani.
“Conor was landing shots that we worked and he was landing them often enough. In my opinion, when Mayweather switched it up and he kind of walked Conor down with the hands high and elbows in and just kept walking forward and let Conor throw shots at the arms – when we saw that we hadn’t prepared for it.
“We tried to switch it up from rounds six or seven. We were telling Conor, ‘just keep popping one or two shots, don’t throw any more combinations – just keep it single shots, enter into the clinch and try to push him backwards.’
“I should have been aware of a game plan like that from Mayweather and that probably should’ve been done in camp. It’s hard to change things when you’re in the fight, so I’m a bit disappointed in myself that I didn’t predict that he would walk forward and let Conor catch him on the arms and walk him down,” Roddy said.
“I honestly thought (Mayweather) was going to pop shots, sit back, work the shoulder roll and Philly shell. He did play that game for the first couple of rounds.
"Conor was having success with all of that, but unfortunately I didn’t have the stuff in place for the walking down strategy. We’ve learned from that.”
What are your thoughts on Roddy saying they didn't expect Mayweather to walk McGregor down? Let us know your thoughts in the comments section below!
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