Conor McGregor Says He "Whupped" Paulie Malignaggi And Left Him "Badly Concussed"

In the immediate aftermath of a dispiriting and embarrassing Friday afternoon loss to a heavy bag, Conor McGregor and the UFC have been working to redeem and restore some of the McGregor’s reputation as a fighter, mostly at the expense of McGregor’s recent sparring partner, Paulie Malignaggi.

Last night, UFC boss Dana White released a pair of videos of the disputed knockdown of Malignaggi during an August 1 sparring session. The videos don’t conclusively show a knockdown any more than they conclusively show a push-down, but they do conclusively show that Conor McGregor has enough hand-eye coordination to throw a punch without knocking himself out, which is not nothing!

This morning, ESPN has McGregor openly shit-talking Malignaggi, gloating about the knockdown and offering a new reason for Malignaggi bailing on McGregor’s training camp after the August 1 sparring session:

“He tried his best, but he got his ass whupped,” McGregor said. “Tell me how his face looked. Tell me how his temple looked. He was badly, badly concussed after those rounds. Badly rattled. He was flattened and knocked down. The ropes kept him up multiple times.

“Sparring partners who were [staying] in the house with him were worried about him. They were ringing us, worried about him stumbling out of the car, incoherent.

“I don’t know what happened. At the end of the day, we got in and traded blows, so I respect him for coming in. It didn’t go well for him. I don’t know why he sprinted out of there. His ego was dented.”

The world cries out for footage of all 12 rounds of the August 1 McGregor-Malignaggi sparring session, if for no other reason than it will show the only competitive rounds of boxing McGregor will participate in this year.