Former two division world champion Paulie Malignaggi has been on a roll as of late, conducting various interviews where he's verbally battering UFC superstar Conor McGregor.
Malignaggi, who retired earlier this year, was hired by McGregor's camp as a sparring partner for the MMA fighter's ongoing training camp to prepare for the upcoming boxing match with Floyd Mayweather Jr.
Malignaggi held two sparring sessions with McGregor and the two of them appeared to be getting along.
Their relationship completely fell apart last week, after members of McGregor's team began to leak photos of the second sparring session - and Malignaggi claimed he was "set up" and felt the photos gave the false impression that he took a beating during the fight. One photo in particular sent Malignaggi over the edge, because it gave off the appearance that McGregor knocked him down. Malignaggi claims McGregor was being badly outboxed and shoved him down to the mat from frustration.
In a recent interview, Malignaggi explained that he was shocked at the way McGregor treated the other sparring partners. He says the wealthy fighter was spending very little to ensure the sparring partners were taken care of.
And Malignaggi claims that McGregor stiffed him for payment as well.
“My problems isn’t just with the sparring. My problem is the way he treats people, the way he treats the other sparring partners,” Malignaggi said on Fox 5’s Sports Xtra.
“He’s on the bit on the cheap side. You have a hundred million dollar fight, you can splurge a little bit more on training camp, especially the way you treat the sparring partners and the living quarters and what not. I asked for nothing, no special treatment. I wanted to be like the sparring partners. In a bit of good faith, I wanted to go over there and stay with the sparring partners. I didn’t negotiate my price. Whatever first price they gave me, I accepted that as far as payment was concerned — which I never got paid by the way.
“I never tried to make things difficult for them, but I assumed things would be on a moderate living conditions. They really weren’t. A little on the cheap side, like I said. I put it like this, I’ve never been part of a 100 million dollar fight, but I’ve been part of multiple fights where there’s been million dollar purses in there. So once you’ve been part of 7 and 8 figure purses — 9 figures in this case — you understand how to treat this training camp and how to properly budget it without being too cheap, but without overspending. There’s people involved, and there’s a team involved, and you need to take care of them too.”
“And I’ve never seen such a cheap guy in my life, in all my training camps. I was blown away with this guy, with the treatment he’s given everybody. But he made sure he rented himself a Lamborghini in Vegas, which was like ‘what is it about? You don’t respect anybody else? I mean these are the people helping you. Is it about status with you?’ I don’t understand what it was.”