The mega-money boxing fight between UFC superstar Conor McGregor and Floyd Mayweather was christened as “The Biggest Fight in Combat Sports History” and it didn’t disappoint.A major talking point in the build-up to this fight back in 2017 was the infamous sparring sessions that took place between McGregor and Paulie Malignaggi.The backstory to the sessions is that prior to the fight, Malignaggi seriously insulted and dismissed McGregor's chances of beating Mayweather, so when the fight was scheduled, The Notorious challenged him to come out of retirement and into his Las Vegas training camp to spar.The sparring sessions between McGregor and Malignaggi did not help at all in ending the rivalry between the two, instead, it just poured more fuel on it.In fact, there were times when McGregor vs Malignaggi seemed more heated than McGregor vs Mayweather.The pair first sparred over eight rounds and then over 12, but the American left the Irishman’s team after footage appeared of a disputed knockdown of Malignaggi.

There have been various accounts of what happened in those sparring sessions, with McGregor saying: “The spars were not good for him. He took a lot of head trauma.

"Straight after it, we were worried. He was knocked down, he was flattened against the ropes. Multiple times the ropes kept him on his feet. We were worried about him. We thought the worst was about to happen. He was certainly badly concussed.

"And then he just got out and went running. He showed up, he tried his best. It didn’t go his way. He got his a** whupped, he got his pride dented and then he wanted a way out."

Malignaggi, meanwhile, insisted that he wasn’t knocked down at all, saying: “People say to me, ‘You’re embarrassed he knocked you down’ but he didn’t knock s*** down. He didn’t embarrass me.

"People wish so badly they could see the full video and be right, but you’re never going to get the full video."

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ENTER GIVEAWAY

There have been numerous calls for the full sparring sessions to be released, but they have mostly been ignored with only select footage and sparse pictures available.