We all know that Mayweather is a great boxer, a magician on defense, and McGregor shouldn’t stand a chance against him. However, if a fight fan watches a few McGregor MMA sequences, what you see in those clips is a very powerful and effective striker. In fact, some of it looks downright sophisticated, and one could easily be inclined to give McGregor a better than average chance.
May weather will beat his ass: don't worry about that, and if you want my prediction head to the bottom of this piece. When people talk about the “different level of striking” in boxing, it has little to do with the actual punch, and a great deal to do with what happens before and after it’s thrown. To understand the difference, we can look at a few simple aspects of striking in boxing as compared to MMA.
The first, most painfully (sorry…) obvious deficiency in MMA is the lack of head movement and defense before, during and after throwing. Exchanges in MMA are usually brief and violent, and rarely part of ongoing or developing sequences of punches. In virtually all of McGregor’s fights, he’s successful with his strikes because his opponents don’t move their heads much at all, stand right in front of him after throwing, and when they move, it’s in straight lines forward and backwards.
The Nate Diaz/Conor McGregor fight is an excellent example of the average level of boxing craft in MMA. Every sequence was a straight line, with both guys leaving themselves wide open after throwing their own punches. Defense consisted of occasionally leaning backwards with their hands down, which often did nothing more than make their chins easier targets, worse, putting their hands in front of their faces and walking straight in, and most abysmally of all, taking a shot and reflexively doing absolutely nothing.
Just take a look at this picture below of McGregor landing a shot to Nate Diaz's face. For starters, notice how Diaz's left and right hands are at nipple and balls level respectively. What they are doing down there I have no idea, and I'd mention where some better places for them might be in a stand-up fight if I didn't think they were already in your mind. However, as amateurish a target as Diaz was, McGregor is by no means immune from criticism. My first question when he got back to the corner would be, "why is your damn chip up so high? If you stood him up straight, he'd be staring at the highlights on the Jumbotron above the octagon. That right there is boxing 101, and 102 is "if you're going to leave your chin out there like a big, juicy, dopey target, for the love of all that is holy keep your goddamn right hand in front of it in case something comes back at you."
There is literally enough room between McGregor's right hand and his chin for him to be holding a dart board so his opponent can play a game of 501 on his face and body.
Here's another "and you wonder why you got hit" moment. This one features Diaz hitting McGregor with what appears to be some kind of baby bitchslap. Where McGregor's hands are I have no idea, but if I got hit by a shot because I was standing around like that I'd probably have that pissed off look on my face too. Notice that McGregor is leaning straight back in an attempt to avoid a punch, and how incredibly effective that technique is for ensuring it lands. I don't know what happened after this image, but what should have happened (provided McGregor could in any way get himself rebalanced again) is a counter right hand ripping through the void between Diaz's exposed skull and the great unknown, while Diaz's left arm is around flapping in what appears to be a failed attempt at flight.
And here is a garden-variety example of how miserable your life can become when you throw a punch while simultaneously using your other hand to unlock your front door instead of guarding your skull. I don't think this needs any more commentary, save that the only two people in the arena who aren't watching the fight are the two guys involved in it. It's a natural reflex to close your eyes when you someone is trying to punch you and when punching, and a very bad one boxers go to incredible lengths to stymie.
Now this is not to say that boxers have their hands up in front of their face all the time. Mayweather is a premier example of a boxer who keeps one hand low to defend his body when he's using the shoulder roll, but there are ways and means of going about it. In this picture, Mayweather is countering Mosley's left hand. His left hand is low, but notice that it's tight to his body and ready to either throw or come up for defense. Also, Mayweather's technique is impeccable with the straight right hand. Notice that Moseley's punch is being caught on Mayweather's shoulder as he's throwing his own punch. There is no way Mosley's hand could get to his head from that angle, as offense and defense are fused into one thing.
Finally, Mosley was doing everything right with his non-punching hand, and Mayweather still threaded the needle and put a punch right on his chin. There's not much of an opening there, particularly with a guy as fast and accurate as Mosley.
Here is Canelo Alvarez in virtually the same position as Mayweather in the Mosley picture, with one notable difference. I think we all know what's going to happen next.
Well, everyone except one person, that is...
Obviously, the big takeaway from these pictures is that they are typical of each sport. The boxers look sick, tight and professional, and the MMA guys look loose as hell. Also, I didn't cherry pick these to make MMA look bad. Go take a peek for yourself—there's plenty to see.
The big question, of course, is "what does this mean for the fight". An example of how much impact an amateur-quality piece of boxing craft can have in the arms race of MMA would be Holly Holm/Ronda Rousey. Holm was a professional boxer, and pummeled a confused and helpless Rousey into a paste behind her footwork. The first notable punch was Holm’s (a southpaw) right hook. Holm circled towards Rousey’s right hand to trick her into throwing it. When she did, Holm stepped back the other direction and hit her with the right hook.
This had two interesting effects: first, it put Holm’s glove a half an inch inside Rousey’s skull, but second, it moved Holm outside Rousey’s left shoulder where she was unable to retaliate. But what's really pathetic is Rousey had the entire day before the fight to think about that punch. Here's Holly Holm already putting the right hook together at the weigh-in, and Rousey still didn't see it coming in the octagon.
Unfortunately for Rousey, this was not the end of the story. The right hook was just a diversion so Holm could land the left cross—the killer weapon of the southpaw. After blasting Rousey with four or five right hooks to make her good and hesitant to throw her right cross at Holm, Holm dispensed with the hook and started unloading her left cross directly into Rousey’s faceballs as she circled around. These are the punches that did the majority of the damage, and once they started landing regularly Rousey resorted to charging forward like a bull, flailing her arms wildly, and at one stage whiffed so badly she fell over.
I will stress that these are basic tricks for the boxing crowd, and Rousey had zero answers. In fact, it was like watching a child. When Rousey went back to her corner with a bloody face at the end of round 1, all her trainer had to offer her in the way of advice was “Beautiful work, keep doing what you’re doing.” After that, Rousey would have had every right to spit her mouthpiece into his face in a stream of blood, teeth and saliva, and walk out of the building.
Of course, Rousey isn’t McGregor, but McGregor hasn’t shown anything in his playbook that suggests he would fare any better against a decent boxer, much less a Mayweather. He is good at delivering a left cross as a counterpunch against guys with bad technique. The baseball bat mentality with punches certainly makes MMA exciting, but it's still amateur hour compared to what he's going to see in the ring against C-level boxers. McGregor simply hasn’t had opponents in front of him that require him to develop a high level of skill with angles and footwork to set up his punches, and that cannot be learned in A premier example is the first round KO of Aldo, who literally walked straight towards McGregor while throwing a ridiculously looping left hand and dropping his right hand down to the waistband on his trunks. The camera angle doesn't do it justice, but I believe Also accidentally knocked a beer out of a spectator's hand in the fifth row where he started that punch. Incidentally, Aldo is one of the best in the sport of MMA, and this is the quality of boxing technique he's producing. Look where his hands are, take a second, and reflect upon how surprised you are that this happened.
He looks like he was going in for a bear hug, and McGregor stole on him. His form was so bad and he was so wide open that he’s lucky he didn’t get hit with a counterpunch that was still travelling from the previous fight on the card. The left hand counter that KO’d Aldo was a signature moment for McGregor, but as fun as it was entirely a product of horrible boxing technique colliding with a good counter shot.
What to Expect in the Fight
McGregor has a few technical problems that seem to have persisted through his training camp. The first is that his signature uppercuts are wildly looping. A good uppercut on the inside should be delivered short, with the arm tight to the side to protect against any incoming shots. Mayweather is too fast and sharp (two years off be damned), and will eat him alive with tight counter rights. Second, McGregor throws his left hand with a lot of leverage as he rolls his shoulder over the punch. Mayweather has several options to counter this, the first being his pull counter over the top of McGregor’s punch. Worse, as he turns the punch over, McGregor drops is right hand way down, which is why he almost never throws a punch after he get the left off. I expect that Mayweather will be able to step to the side and use his check hook to great effect, and once McGregor is off his rhythm, Mayweather will begin clocking him with lead right hands up the middle.
Woefully for McGregor, the check left hook, lead right, and right hand counter are three of Mayweather’s signature shots. Also, McGregor will probably need to get inside to bully Mayweather, but I haven’t seen anything in his MMA career that suggests he’s got an infighting game at all. In fact, Nate Diaz often got the better of him inside. My biggest worry in the fight, other than McGregor’s health, is that when he bullies Mayweather to the ropes and grapples he’s going to inadvertently throw a knee when he’s tired, pummeled and confused.
Now I expect that McGregor is going to have about three tricks in his book for this fight. He’s not a particularly varied striker in MMA, and really only throws a left cross and an uppercut with anything effective on them. Mayweather will neutralize these weapons in the first round. The look on McGregor’s face will be one of “OK, my feet are wet”. His corner probably won’t have much to say, other than mentioning a few punches that Floyd obviously hit him with. In round 2, Mayweather will start warming up, which means he will start making enough contact with McGregor to get his attention. The look on McGregor’s face after the second round will probably be slightly deflated and definitely confused and hoping his corner’s got something to say. If I was a betting man, I would imagine it will look something like this:
They won’t, or at least won’t have anything helpful to add. They will probably sound a little concerned as a result.
Round 3 should be the one that sets the pattern for however long the fight is going to last. As his confidence builds, Mayweather will start schooling McGregor, who, by round 4, should be looking weary, bewildered, and throwing pretty loose punches as he degrades into lobbing ineffective caveman punches by rote. I expect the MMA striking coach in McGregor’s corner to sound concerned and nervously agitated in the corner as he realizes that their game plan was really no game plan at all, and he doesn’t have a clue what Mayweather is doing in there. I don’t see this going past six (in fact, I think round 5 or 6 are the best bets for the stoppage), and probably will be stopped by the corner or the ref.