There’s a growing list of people who watched Conor McGregor’s second sparring session with Paulie Malignaggi that have reported that the UFC champion got by far the better of the 12-rounder, and you can now count Dana White among them.
Who won the sparring session has been the subject of intense speculation for the past week, but what really sent the whole thing into overdrive was when White released two 10-second clips on Friday that showed McGregor hitting Malignaggi with some clean, hard shots and also either knocking him down or pushing him to the floor.
Since then Malignaggi has argued that the footage has been edited in a misleading way and is not representative of the entire fight, which he claims would show him “beating the brakes off” McGregor.
However, in a new interview White, who watched the entire fight alongside Lorenzo Fertitta from ring-side in Las Vegas, insists that Malignaggi took a beating from start to finish.
“Let me tell you what, I was there for all 12 rounds and Paulie has said some crazy things, some bad things about me — I felt sorry for the guy,” White told Sky Sports yesterday. “It was a one way beating and a lot of people were saying Conor couldn’t box, Paulie was obviously lying about everything that he said about the sparring match so I released it.”
White also added that he’s got “No problem releasing the full tape,” but that wouldn’t happen until after the Mayweather fight so as not to give his opponent a heads-up on the kind of tactics he’ll be looking to employ on August 26th.
After that there’s now speculation that McGregor could go on to fight Malignaggi, but based on what White saw during their sparring session it doesn’t sound like he thinks it would be in the former two-weight boxing world champion’s best interests.
“It was very one-sided,” White said. “It was an absolute beating and guess what? I think it was the right thing for Paulie Malignaggi to definitely leave for his health’s sake.”
