By Keith Idec

LAS VEGAS – When Floyd Mayweather Jr. kept saying he couldn’t train the way he once did during the buildup toward his fight with Conor McGregor, we didn’t know the half of it.

Mayweather revealed following his 10th-round stoppage of McGregor on Saturday night that he suffered a hand injury during training camp that prevented him from sparring during the final month of his preparation. It wasn’t an injury, Mayweather explained, that was bad enough to make him consider pulling out of this pay-per-view extravaganza.

The undefeated superstar stopped sparring more than a month ago because Mayweather wanted to make sure his notoriously fragile hands were as close to 100 percent as possible when he stepped in the ring to meet McGregor at T-Mobile Arena.

“We had a cool training camp,” Mayweather said during the post-fight press conference. “I didn’t box – for the last month, I didn’t do no sparring. But, you know, there’s no excuses. He came out here, he fought a hell of a fight, hell of a stand-up guy, and I just went out there and did what I do best. I found a way to trap him and broke him down.”

The 40-year-old Mayweather (50-0, 27 KOs) has endured delicate hands for most of his career, thus he knew how to manage the pain once it became an issue while training for his final fight.

“It was an injury, of course,” Mayweather said when asked to elaborate on the nature of his injury. “Not an injury like that, but I wanted my hands to be a hundred percent for the fight. You know, I didn’t want – my hands is real brittle; everybody knows that. I wanted my hands to be solid when I come out here, so when I’m shooting hard shots I’m able to break the guy down. Where if I were to box and I have a serious hand injury, I wouldn’t be able to punch as hard.”

Mayweather landed numerous hard right hands against McGregor, who was exhausted later in their fight and became more susceptible to a knockout.

Keith Idec is a senior writer/columnist for BoxingScene.com. He can be reached on Twitter @Idecboxing.