Former two division champion Paulie Malignaggi is not impressed by what he saw from UFC superstar Conor McGregor on Saturday night. The MMA fighter was stopped in ten rounds by five division world champion Floyd Mayweather Jr.
McGregor, a two division champion in the UFC, was making his professional boxing debut.
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.
And the two of them had a bad falling out.
Malignaggi became enraged 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.
Once the images came out, Malignaggi immediately quit McGregor's camp.
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.
McGregor has claimed in several interviews that Malignaggi took a beating that was so severe, that everyone was worried about him because he was stumbling around even hours after the sparring session.
After what Malignaggi saw on Saturday night, he would love to get McGregor in the ring.
“F*** yeah, why not? That's the easiest money I can make. Are you kidding me? He's not very likable. I mean, listen, everything I said about him came true [on Saturday]. You can't edit this video. You can't edit this fight. Everything I said came true. I said, early on he's going to get through it and he can give you confusing looks early on. Then, when you start breaking him down, he's not the gutsiest guy. What's he do? He stops punching back, he goes into pockets of action where he doesn't throw back at all. He starts throwing less and less, he doesn't want to fight you when he's tired. And then finally, at the end, he basically let himself get stopped," Malignaggi told iFL TV.
“He started stumbling around like he was hurt, all over the place. He wasn't that hurt. He was hurt, but he wasn't that hurt. So, stop stumbling around. What are you stumbling around for? He was looking for a way out of the fight at a certain point. He said after the fight that they should have let him finish the round, they should have let him finish... You cannot go a minute straight without punching and be assaulted for that whole minute straight and expect the ref to not stop the fight. He said, ‘Oh I should have been allowed to go out on my back.’ Buddy, they'll let you go out on your back. Throw a punch or two and the referee won't stop it."
