In fairness to Conor McGregor, he rallied strongly after being left on stage on his own for almost 10 minutes.
The first press conference of the Mayweather vs. McGregor world tour took place in Los Angeles on Tuesday night and the numbers of people watching it live was incredible.
Between the Showtime Sports and UFC live streams, some 800,000 were watching the action unfold, as well as the 11,000+ at the Staples Center (sic) and hundreds of thousands more on other streams, Periscope, Facebook Live, Twitter and a myriad of streams.
Floyd Mayweather Jr definitely took the honours when it came to showmanship and verbal jousting, with ‘The Notorious’ caught unawares by the Showtime set-up and exactly what was expected of him.
McGregor was at his best whenever his microphone was working and he was interrupting ‘Money’ from behind the dais. Once it came to their final face-off, though, the sparks really flew.
Mayweather was front and centre but he did not have to wait long for the Dubliner to reach him. As the American started to trash-talk, McGregor twice said, “I’ll bounce your head off the canvas!”
“He was trying to say something about the [10 oz.] gloves and I was like ‘You cried about the gloves’. He cried about the ounces of the gloves.
“Then he tried to say ‘MMA next, we’ll do’.
“I was like [wags his finger] ‘You’re talking sh*t about stuff that you won’t do’. Other than that it was just back-and-forth. The usual shite.”
https://youtu.be/fBu3obM7xwQ
Mayweather also opened up a little on the exchange between himself and the UFC lightweight champion. He told reporters:
“It was just trash-talking that fighters say to one another.
“Of course, he was saying how good he was. I was like, ‘I don’t have to tell you how good I am. You already know’.
“He was talking about gloves and saying he was going to knock me out. Yeah, that’s what they all say.”
Several reporters also picked up Mayweather telling McGregor that he had better show up for the fight itself on August 26.
“Oh, he’ll show,” Mayweather confidently predicted.
