Conor McGregor Still Believes Conditioning Only Reason He Lost To Floyd Mayweather

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Five days have passed since Conor McGregor nabbed the biggest cash grab of his combat sports career.

Now that the dust has settled on Saturday’s TKO defeat to Floyd Mayweather, McGregor took to his verified Instagram account to address the loss. While McGregor is as honest as it gets in assessing his performances, the UFC lightweight champion still believes the only reason he wasn’t able to hand Mayweather his first professional blemish in 50 outings was because of his conditioning issues.

Just coming back around after a whirlwind couple of days. Thank you to all the fans for the support of the fight and the event! Without your support we as fighters are nothing so I thank you all! Thank you to my team of coaches and training partners! I had an amazing team and It truly was an amazing and enjoyable camp, and honestly I feel with just a little change in certain areas of the prep, we could have built the engine for 12 full rounds under stress, and got the better result on the night. Getting to 12 rounds alone in practice was always the challenge in this camp. We started slowly getting to the 12 and decreasing the stress in the rounds the closer it got to 12. I think for the time we had, 10 weeks in camp, it had to be done this way. If I began with a loaded 12 rounds under much stress I would have only hit a brick wall and lost progress as a result and potentially not made the fight. A little more time and we could have made the 12 cleanly, while under more stress, and made it thru the later rounds in the actual fight. I feel every decision we made at each given time was the correct decision, and I am proud of everyone of my team for what we done in the short time that we done it. 30 minutes was the longest I have fought in a ring or cage or anywhere. Surpassing my previous time of 25 minutes. I am happy for the experience and happy to take all these great lessons with me and implement them into my camp going forward. Another day another lesson! Congrats to Floyd on a well fought match. Very experienced and methodical in his work. I wish him well in retirement. He is a heck of a boxer. His experience, his patience and his endurance won him this fight hands down. I always told him he was not a fighter but a boxer. But sharing the ring with him he is certainly a solid fighter. Strong in the clinch. Great understanding of frames and head position. He has some very strong tools he could bring into an MMA game for sure. Here is a toast of whiskey to everyone involved in this event and everyone who enjoyed it! Thank you to you all! Onto the next one!

A post shared by Conor McGregor Official (@thenotoriousmma) on Aug 31, 2017 at 1:21am PDT

McGregor admitted during the post-fight press conference that his questionable conditioning is something that has haunted him in the past, most recently against Nate Diaz in their epic rematch. Although McGregor ended up digging deep to avenge his loss to Diaz, he can’t solve the conditioning puzzle when it comes to the middle minutes.

The boisterous Irishman wasn’t as fortunate against Mayweather, as he played right into Mayweather’s brittle hands.

It was clear after the third period that Mayweather’s game plan was to tire McGregor out while hunting for a knockout. It was the most aggressive the best defensive boxer has been in God knows how long, at least since posting his last KO in 2011.

Did McGregor do better against Mayweather than everyone expected? Absolutely.

Did McGregor land more punches on Maywather than Manny Pacquiao did? Certainly.

Were the six people who each bet at least $1 million on Mayweather crapping their pants after the third round? Probably.

Was Mayweather ever in any danger of losing to the MMA star in his boxing debut? Never.

At no point was Mayweather fearful of being put to sleep by McGregor’s trademark left bomb. “Money” was afforded the luxury of fighting with reckless abandon because he knew McGregor didn’t offer anything he couldn’t handle.

That’s why Mayweather was more than happy to eat more punches than usual so he could cap off his illustrious boxing career with an exclamation point KO. And that’s exactly what happened en route to 50-0.

Keep in mind, even if McGregor manged to survive the 10th round onslaught, he was down significantly on all three scorecards. Two judges only gave him the first round. The third judge handed him the opening three periods, but awarded Mayweather a dominant 10-8 mark for his work in the 9th.

That’s impossible ground to make up in just two rounds, especially since all three judges would have likely given Mayweather a 10-8 mark in the 10th. The only chance McGregor had was the one he rode in on – a puncher’s chance. However, it’s hard to land the perfect haymaker with no gas in the tank.

Sorry, Conor. While you have absolutely nothing to be ashamed of, conditioning was just a small piece of the problem against Mayweather, not the only.