Boxing super-star Paulie Malignaggi was once a Conor McGregor critic for taking the fight against Floyd Mayweather. One of many pro-boxers who called out the UFC champion, Paulie is now changing his tune.
Called upon to come spar by Team McGregor, Paulie is now aiding Conor for his August 26 date with Floyd Mayweather.
After sparring with Conor yesterday, Paulie took to ESPN with a progress report on the UFC champ.
He stated,
“There was a lot of trash talking right away. A lot of fighting right away. At the end, you look back on it, it was kind of fun. I don’t have many people who can match my trash talk, but Conor definitely can. It was making it a lot of fun. To say a mixed martial artist is coming into boxing and wouldn’t be awkward is an understatement. He’s going to have his own style and set of things he does. He’s got a game plan. It’s not what people think.
“I’ll put it like this: He knows what he wants to do and he has a method of how he wants to get there. The mechanism of how he gets there may look, to the naked eye, ‘hmm, I don’t know about this.’ But there’s a method to his madness. He’s a thinker.”
“He’s got some pop in the left hand, I can’t take that away from him. In boxing, especially against a guy like Floyd Mayweather, you need to devise a few more weapons, and I think that’s what Conor is working on. I think … coming into this situation already knowing Conor has a big left hand … you’re probably going to prepare for that left hand.
“Obviously, Conor is working on other things besides the left hand, so there can be that surprise element to it. … There’s going to be other things he needs to make you worry about, and that’s what’s being worked on in camp. He’s effective at what he’s doing.”
“I think [McGregor] is definitively an underdog, but he has a method to what he’s doing and he has a thinking process behind it. This is a fight of moments, and I think he can give himself certain moments.
“If those moments turn into bigger moments, that’s not up to me. That’s up to Conor McGregor.”
