Yesterday, it was reported by boxing referee Joe Cortez that things got a little rough between former boxing champ Paulie Malignaggi and Conor McGregor during a recent sparring session.
Via RUSH 93
“It was the real thing, I had to stop the action, say, ‘You guys are a little out of control here, you’ve got to stop this.’ You know, they got a little rough,” Cortez told Rush 93. “They were both roughing each other up and I had to stop the action like it was a regular fight. They were holding too much – they were trying to punch each other.”
“So I had to call, ‘Time, alright guys you’ve got to stop this right now, I want a good, clean, strong – give me a sportsman-like conduct you understan
Malignaggi went on Dan Patrick’s show and spoke with Chris Mannix about what went down during the heated sparring session with McGregor.
It got a little rough, it got a little tense. It got dirty, very dirty even in spots in sparring. He brings his game face into sparring, he’s not very likable, I gotta admit I’m not very likable when I’m in there either. There were also some words in the media about what we said about each other before camp and things came to a head in sparring. I’m sure it’ll come to a head again, I’m not here to be friends and he’s not there to be friends with his sparring partners.
According to McGregor’s training partner, Tiernan Bradley, McGregor wanted to straight up fight Malignaggi during their sparring sessions.
Via Irish News
You can see he’s still a class operator, and it was an interesting spar to watch – more a full on fight actually. Conor told us all when Paulie came into camp ‘this is not a spar, I want to fight him. I’m ready for a war’.
Paulie was talking to him in between rounds, trying to give him advice, but then he was getting slapped in the face.
I saw what he said about Conor’s power and he’s playing a bit of a dangerous game because he still has more spars to go with Conor, and Conor will be out there to knock him out. He’ll want to show him he has ‘oh my God’ power.