Former two division champion Paulie Malignaggi is so confident of victory - he's ready to sign a contract for a "winner takes all" contest with UFC superstar Conor McGregor.
McGregor, a two division champion in the UFC, made his professional boxing debut this past Saturday night. The MMA fighter was stopped in ten rounds by five division world champion Floyd Mayweather Jr.
Malignaggi, as part of the Showtime broadcast team, was sitting ringside at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas.
Malignaggi, who retired from boxing earlier this year, was hired as a sparring partner by McGregor, to help the UFC fighter prepare for the scheduled battle with Mayweather.
Malignaggi quit after members of McGregor's team released images of their second sparring session on social media.
The images painted what Malignaggi claimed was a "dishonest" picture of the sparring session - as one image showed Malignaggi down on the mat from a claimed knockdown and other images showed him taking punishment.
Then UFC President Dana White released hand-picked video clips from the sparring session. One clip showed a debatable knockdown of Malignaggi and the other had McGregor doing damage.
Last Tuesday, the two of them had a face to face confrontation and traded some very heated words before getting separated.
Malignaggi believes the fans want this fight to happen and he's ready to get in the ring to do it.
“I think the fans want it and I think its a very sellable fight. How bad does he want it? I’ll tell you this, he has most of the public perception that he got the better of me in sparring and he has them believing in that f***ing knockdown. But we knows what happens if he fights me. He knows he sparred with me when I was only at 35-40 percent because I was retired and he knows the trouble he had with me," Malignaggi told Andreas Hale.
“I’m all about it, man. I’ll make it winner-takes-all. I’m willing to risk fighting him for free just to punch him in the mouth again and again and again. That’s how confident I am they can’t beat me. A fighter is a fighter when faced with adversity. Anytime somebody gets Conor McGregor to that point of adversity in MMA or boxing, he punks out. You can’t teach that. Either you have balls or you don’t.”
How confident is Malignaggi? He is willing to stipulate to a clause that gives McGregor additional money if he's capable of lasting to the final bell.
“If Conor doesn’t get stopped by me – and I’m a guy who doesn’t get a lot of stoppages – if Conor doesn’t get stopped by me I should get penalized at least a portion of my purse just for not stopping the guy," Malignaggi said.
