Top Irish amateur Tiernan Bradley, who is currently serving as a sparring partner for Conor McGregor, has been revealing a lot details regarding the training camp blowup between the UFC superstar and former two division champion Paulie Malignaggi.
Malignaggi and Bradley were both helping McGregor prepare for his upcoming professional boxing debut, taking place on August 26th from the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas.
McGregor has a very tall order, when he faces former five division world champion Floyd Mayweather J.r (49-0, 26 KOs).
Last week, Malignaggi became enraged and quit McGregor's camp - after the MMA fighter's team members leaked photos of a recent sparring session to social media.
The images created a firm impression that Malignaggi was dropped and took a beating during the spar. Malignaggi maintains that he outboxed McGregor to the point where the MMA fighter pushed him down to the floor.
According to Bradley, McGregor and his team didn't really care that Malignaggi quit the camp.
"The attitude of Conor, the coaches and rest of the team to Paulie walking out has been straightforward - sh*t happens, life moves on. This camp is not about Paulie. When we’re in the gym, we’re concentrating on Conor, getting him ready. I did some school sparring with him on the Thursday, the day Paulie left and it was as if nothing had happened. This is not the Big Brother house. It’s a training camp, and that’s all anybody left here cares about," Bradley told Irish News.
The big question - did McGregor drop Malignaggi?
Bradley appears to hint that Malignaggi was knocked down.
"As for the ‘knockdown’ itself, you can make your own mind up when the footage is eventually released, if anybody even cares by that stage. I’ve seen people say that, from the photo, you can tell that it was a push down by the body language of Joe Cortez. I can tell you now – Joe didn’t see the incident that led to Paulie being on the ground. He didn’t see it. At the end of the day it was a spar, so what is he going to do - give him a count?," Bradley said.
"People can make up their own minds when they see the video. Paulie has done plenty of talking, but he could be talking himself into a hole when the footage comes out after the Mayweather fight."
"Obviously he saw that picture and his pride was dented. I can understand that, but at the same time he was on TV doing interviews the week before, talking about Conor’s power being overblown and all this stuff."
"He was talking to Mayweather’s guys, talking to pro boxers and doing interviews – what did he think was going to happen? Did he expect to just come in here and talk sh*t?"
