UFC News and Rumors 2016: Floyd Mayweather Jr. Thinks Racism Reason for McGregor's Popularity
The Ultimate Fighting Championship came up with a new pay-per-view star in 2015 in the person of blunt and trash-talking fighter Conor McGregor. After demolishing then featherweight champion Jose Aldo in just 13 seconds at UFC 194, the Irishman officially produced two consecutive PPV fights that generated almost a million buys.
It's a good thing for combat sports, right?
While mixed martial arts fans are having a field day, enjoying a great year, another great fighter in a competing industry is not making any fun out of McGregor's emergence as a star. According to boxing's pound-for-pound best fighter and recently retired Floyd Mayweather Jr., the new UFC featherweight champion is nothing but a product of racism in the sport.
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In an interview with FightHype.com, the African-American boxer criticized McGregor. "I don't really know the McGregor guy, never seen him fight… They say he talks a lot of trash and people praise him for it, but when I did it, they say I'm cocky and arrogant. So biased," said Mayweather. He also said he believes that racism in sports still exists.
Mayweather may be right about McGregor talking trash a lot of times but that actually is kind of an understatement. Both fighters, though belonging in two different combat sports disciplines, love to mock and intimidate their opponents. While they love to portray bad blood as the reason, the fact is all of those are basically about generating more hype. But for McGregor, he goes a level higher by making a tirade of insults against his opponents. In most instances, he likes to target their personal lives to a point that whatever comes out of his mouth is something that's going to make the opponent blow up.
Just like Mayweather, McGregor is undefeated in the UFC, which is probably why the boxer is a bit apprehensive about the mixed martial artist's popularity these days. While both are never going to see each other in a fight, it should be quite interesting to think that this may all lead up to Mayweather having a good reason to "un-retire" and perhaps fight someone who does not have the same skin color he has.
