Paulie Malignaggi says Conor McGregor could have stopped him in sparring
Back when Conor McGregor was training for Floyd Mayweather, the Irishman brought in Paulie Malignaggi to help him spar. From there, it has been a rivalry ever since. Malignaggi says that he just landed and was forced to fight 12 rounds and claims the leaked footage is fake. While McGregor’s camp states that he did drop them. Since then, the two have gone back-and-forth on social media. And now, Malignaggi will fight Artem Lobov at Bare Knuckle Fighting Championship 6.
There, Malignaggi will try and get revenge against McGregor’s friend and training partner. However, looking back on the sparring session, the former boxer claimed the UFC star could have finished him.
“If you see it unedited, I actually thought it was pretty entertaining,” Malignaggi said at a BKFC 6 press conference. “And the only reason it’s entertaining is because I’m talking shit, he’s talking shit, and it’s mildly competitive because I don’t have enough air, oxygen, to assault him.”
Why he believes that is as mentioned is the fact that he just landed and was jetlagged. Add in the fact he hasn’t trained and Malignaggi believes if McGregor had balls to do so, he would have stopped him in sparring.
“I’ll tell you one thing about Conor, he could have probably stopped me in 12 rounds because I don’t have the air supply to go 12 rounds under those circumstances, but he’s got no balls at all,” Malignaggi said. “So every time I was able to land a shot or two, he gave me my points. He gave me a chance to reoxygen. All I had to do was pot shot him and rip him with random shots here and there, and it would domesticate him enough to pace myself throughout the 12 rounds.”
Ultimately, the sparring session has caused a lot of drama. If McGregor stopped Paulie Malignaggi, all of this could have very well never happened.
