Floyd Mayweather Jr and Conor McGregor are less than two weeks away from their pay-per-view showdown, taking place on August 26th at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas.
McGregor, who is the biggest star in mixed martial arts, will be making his professional boxing debut, while the 40 year old Mayweather is coming back after two years of retirement.
“It won’t go the distance. I look forward to ending the fight early. It’s not going the distance,” Mayweather said.
Floyd Mayweather Sr., father and trainer of Floyd, expects a dominating victory but says his son's well-known hand issues are potentially going to prevent a knockout victory.
“I ain’t gonna say a knockout, because my son got a hand problem,” Mayweather Sr told FOX Sports 11. “That’s a true story, he got a hand problem. He gonna make Conor McGregor look like a fool. Believe me.”
‘Money’s’ 49-0 record features just 26 KOs (53 percent). His last KO win came six years and eight fights ago, against Victor Ortiz, the only KO in his last 10 fights. He has not scored consecutive KO wins since 2000-01, against Emanuel Augustus and Diego Corrales.
Why? He has been battling hand problems for his entire career, forcing him to become the defensive genius and counter-punching exponent who no one has been able to beat.
The long-time former cutman of Mayweather, Rafael Garcia, revealed that he used a special, unnamed Mexican medicine on the boxer’s hands.
Mayweather hasn’t fought for two years, since his underwhelming unanimous decision win over Andre Berto. He hurt both hands in that fight, despite barely pursuing a knockout.
In Mayweather’s favour may be conditioning. ‘Money’ is phenomenally fit, while McGregor’s last fight that went the distance - his majority decision win over Nate Diaz at UFC 202 - saw him regularly backing up from his opponent to catch his breath. That was a 25-minute fight, albeit in five-minute rounds where he was also defending takedowns, against 36 minutes (12 x 3-minute rounds) vs Mayweather, who may fancy his chances of stopping a gassed-out rival.