The Biggest Combat Sports Event of the Decade is This Weekend

After nearly two years of talk, months of planning and negotiations, and even more hype, the fight of the decade is here! Floyd “Money” Mayweather vs “Notorious” Conor McGregor. Who knows if this is an athletic competition or a freak show. We could be on our way to seeing one of the greatest sports moments ever or another Mayweather match that makes you feel like you just got fleeced.

Floyd Mayweather is one of the more flawed athletes of the last fifteen years to put it mildly but he is also the best defensive boxer of all time. The man is a super computer of boxing knowledge. It’s strange to think that a guy, who might not be able to read, would have an advantage in the mental aspect of the fight. I don’t mean the mindset but rather the ability to adjust in the fly, measure distance, and formulate movement and strategies to win on the score card.

The most intriguing aspect of the fight is going to be how Mayweather dissects the approach or several approaches that McGregor and his coaches could have formulated. McGregor has never been one to follow the beaten path. His head trainer John Kavanagh is known for thinking outside the box. Think of him like a mix of Alex Guerrero and Chip Kelly. McGregor is a master of many different fighting skill sets most of which Mayweather has no experience with. Just because McGregor can’t kick Floyd or choke out the founder of the Money Team doesn’t mean his years of MMA training will have no baring on this fight. Conor has many different stances and ways of throwing strikes than the more honed boxer and like Floyd he’s a counter puncher, and therefore also very skilled at measuring distance and his opponents patterns.

The story of this fight will be if McGregor can use his many less polished, more broad and awkward styles to put a glitch in Floyd’s matrix. If McGregor can keep Floyd uncomfortable by showing him a lot of different things it might give him the opportunity to either get in close and bully Floyd in a clinch or drop a big shot that could propelled the Notorious One into the Stratosphere.

Written By: Jason MacKinnon (@oohkillemjason)