Conor McGregor faltered during the Brooklyn leg of his press conference series with Floyd Mayweather on Thursday, but last night in London he was able to bounce back and end the whirlwind tour on top.
Prior to the presser, Mayweather’s business partner Leonard Ellerbe had indicated that the UK was like a second home for the boxer and he was anticipating some solid support for his man, but that didn’t prove to be the case at all.
Instead, the crowd couldn’t have been more vocal in their support for McGregor and constantly harrassed Mayweather from start to finish, and the Irishman fed off that energy.
McGregor’s speech didn’t have as many zingers as he had in Toronto, but he managed to steer clear of the racial missteps that had counted against him in NYC and his best moment came when he ribbed Mayweather for having worn high-heels the previous day to bring him closer to his eye-level compared to their first presser in Los Angeles.
“40 year old man, what the f*ck?” McGregor stated as he stood just inches from his adversary, who was pretended to be busy checking his phone. “He was wearing high heels yesterday! Check the face-off picture from yesterday, and check it from the day before, proper high heels that bitch was wearing! You shoulda worn em on the first day you stupid baldy tw*t.”
McGregor played with fire at one point though when he walked behind Mayweather and playfully rubbed him on his head. Mayweather didn’t react, but given that the fighters have a ‘no touching’ clause in their contract, it remains to be seen if that will come baack to haunt him.
The Irishman had the crowd eating out of the palm of his hand and didn’t overstay his welcome, leaving Mayweather with some work to do if he wanted to come out on top in the verbal war.
‘Money’s’ task was made all the more difficult by the fact that the crowd wouldn’t stop hounding him, yelling in unison, “Pay your taxes, “sit down, shut up,” as well as other pro-McGregor chants, while he was greeted with dead-silence when he attempted to get them to sing ‘Happy Birthday’ to the now 29-year-old UFC champion.
To his credit, Mayweather never let that get under his skin and kept his composure, but he seemed to be running low on material and instead remained silent for large spells as we walked and occasionally danced around the makeshift ring that they were giving their speeches from.
Mayweather’s best moment was when he ripping down a couple of McGregor’s promotor banners from the corners of the ring, but it didn’t seem to phase ‘The Notorious’ in the way he might have hoped for.
Other than that, much of Mayweather’s material fell wide of the mark. At the beginning of his speech he tried to grab all the mics off the table so McGregor couldn’t talk over him, but the Irish star quickly grabbed a mic sitting close by and then quipped, “I’m too fast for you, Floyd.”
As he’d done at every other stop on the tour, at one point Mayweather asked his entourage for his bag, which no doubt contained some kind of prop he was going to use, but for reasons that were never made clear the item never made it’s way on stage.
Where Mayweather really dropped the ball however was when he aimed a homophobic slur against McGregor that’s since led to him receiving the same kind of backlash as his rival had experienced over perceived racial overtones earlier in the week.
“You punk. You fa**ot. You ho!” Mayweather shouted.
The two eventually squared off for one final staredown to end the tour, and with Mayweather wearing more tight-fitting clothes and without his usual baseball cap it was clear to see that there’s a distinct difference in the size of the two fighters respective builds.
So, looking back at the world tour as a whole, McGregor appeared to edge the verbal warfare, grabbed the most headlines and was the overwhelming fan favorite at every stop, but Mayweather proved to be a worthy adversary and didn’t seem to have let his rival get under his skin.
Now this traveling circus comes to an end though and the real work begins as they had back to their respective camps for the final six weeks of training ahead of their blockbuster showdown in Las Vegas on August 26th, and despite all the antics of the past few days it still remains as a daunting a task as ever for McGregor as he prepares to fight in the boxing ring for the first time in his professional career against one of the greatest of all-time in the sport.
