Comments Thread For: Conor McGregor Announces His Retirement

[lparm]

Legend one of the all time greats

[GhostofDempsey]

Smart move. MMA fighters have shorter career spans than boxers. When you are worth $200M, why put yourself through all that? He won't defeat any significant boxer in a boxing ring and he is coming off a big loss in the octagon. Time to enjoy life.

[OldTerry]

MMA isn't anywhere near as evolved as it'll be in another century & change doe. Hell boxing evolved fairly quickly too from 1892 to 1918. Look at it now vs 1918 doe?



Idk about that. I think boxing & MMA have similar, but highly different skill sets for success. I don't suspect a whole lot of guys could be top 3ish, top 5ish in both if another road had been taken.

And I suspect the guys who coulda been high level in both are probably less impressive top guys like maybe a guy like Shawn Porter & a guy like Francis Ngannau for some examples.

Maybe there are even more & better examples in guys who didn't excel at a high level in their chosen professional sport that coulda excelled in the other sport & they basically just choose the wrong sport through love or opportunities presented to them early on.

For one thing I think with the small gloves & rules that score against guys more aggressively for not advancing the action standup defense is barely a thing in MMA like it is in boxing so thats a huge unknown to know how one would have transitioned into a whole other sport with a high enough level to compete at the top ten level & even excel there to the point of winning a belt.

I don't think I'd bet on McGregor being a title holder in some alternative universe where he choose boxing instead of MMA. He'd likely be a winning record guy I have enough confidence in saying. But that puts him in the wide range of top 200ish on up probably.

MMA has become very popular because it is far more violent than boxing. Once people become bored by MMA there will be some type of modification (perhaps hand to hand weapons) to liven up the sport with of course more modifications to follow down the road.

[OldTerry]

I think it's hard to say. Would LeBron James have been a titlist if he'd taken up boxing?

Neither did. LeBron pursued a career in basketball and McGregor became a plumber.

I think that Lebron James as a boxer would have followed the career path of Ed "Too Tall" Jones.

[MexicanStyle#1]

I fail to comprehend Americans insatiable need and praise for sh..iii... tt... talkers... idiotic mentality that praises smack talk more than the actual substance of skills... example.... floyd Mayweather... praised and valued like a king.... vs Guillermo rigeandoux who had 2 times more quality considered boring.... I know people will discredit based on the Loma fight... anyway.... oh pitiful America....

[Eff Pandas]

MMA has become very popular because it is far more violent than boxing. Once people become bored by MMA there will be some type of modification (perhaps hand to hand weapons) to liven up the sport with of course more modifications to follow down the road.

Idk about this exactly anyway. One could argue that MMA is a modification to boxing using this theory. But boxing still exists.

I definitely think MMA advances just like boxing has advanced. Watch the oldest fight you can find & then watch some fight from Saturday. You'll see advancements & you'll notice more if you read about how things worked back then vs how they work now. So I have no doubt MMA has a similar trajectory but not to the point of using weapons lol.

Granted I do expect new combat sports to be birthed from trying to top MMA or other fighting styles & I think we can already see things like this existing. There are those sword fighting in a cage guys. There is that gang fight MMA league that I believe has 3 vs 3 or 5 vs 5 man fights. Even BKB was a hybrid combat sport & I'm sure there are others. But I think the base of MMA stays the same not unlike the base of Boxing has if we could somehow view it 100 years in the future.

One thing I do suspect is sports, specifically dangerous sports like the NFL, Boxing & MMA among other higher risk sports, will be taking place in a VR environment at some future date when the technology is viable to replicate if not enhance the competive experience. I've theorized on this numerous times in the past cuz I think VR tech is gonna vastly change our world in many ways not just with sports but I think you could push all fighting sports up a notch by having guys fighting to the death in the VR world thus it'd be more exciting without the tragedy of true death. Plus unlike in real combat sports where top guys fight 2-3 times a year you could have VR fighters who are only having a avatar of them being harmed could fight multiple times in a night.

With the video game culture ingrained in the younger generations I think this is a fairly obvious path to take. Along with the fact in our PC wear a helmet culture athletes being seriously injured or dying isn't going to be an acceptable thing forever. VR sports will instantly end deaths, severe injuries & even punch drunkness in boxing.

/my scifi future of boxing, MMA & sports in general speculation lol

[Manic Shot]

Good, now join in the next Stallone movie!

[KillaCamNZ]

Negotiation tactic - he's just looking to bleed a bit more money out for his next fight.

[Mooshashi]

Yeah but MMA is evolving quickly because sport sciences, cardio training, strength conditioning are more evolved than 1918.

I believe if McGregor had been a pro boxer he would have been at least an alfabet titilist, kinda career like Paulie or Hatton...at least...what do you think?

His punching power, with boxing gloves on, made Paul Spadafora look like Mike Tyson. He may have won an
"Intercontinental Interim Gold Presumably of Interest" belt from one group or another, but no one would have cared.

[Mooshashi]

I fail to comprehend Americans insatiable need and praise for sh..iii... tt... talkers... idiotic mentality that praises smack talk more than the actual substance of skills... example.... floyd Mayweather... praised and valued like a king.... vs Guillermo rigeandoux who had 2 times more quality considered boring.... I know people will discredit based on the Loma fight... anyway.... oh pitiful America....

I'll give you more examples of sh...iii...tt...talkers:
Tyson Fury
MacGregor
Tony Bellew
BJ Saunders
Derick Chisora

Or wait; none of the above are Americans. And Bellew and Saunders rarely if ever fought in the US.