Floyd Mayweather has claimed that he deliberately decided against knocking out Conor McGregor early in their first fight in order to set up a 2020 rematch.
The 50-0 retired boxing legend declared in November that he will be working alongside Dana White to return this year and has now revealed he’s eyeing two bouts – against Conor McGregor and Khabib Nurmagomedov.
Reflecting on the first McGregor bout, which he won by tenth-round knockout, Mayweather told Drink Champs: “For the Conor McGregor fight I didn’t really train.
“All I did was do push-ups and sit-ups, boxed a few times, hit the bag a few times.
“Training camp was in different places, sometimes I wouldn’t go to the gym for a week.
“I took it serious, but I wanted to have some fun in the fight and I wanted to entertain the people.
“You have to give the people a show, so I gave the people a show.
“If I wanted to go out there and f*** him up and blaze him right out the gate, I could’ve did that.
“But my thing is this, if I would’ve did that, then it wouldn’t be probably a part two.”
Later in the conversation, Mayweather spoke more about his comeback plans.
He said: “Just this year alone, with the two fights on the table, the numbers are up there high.
“My numbers can be somewhere upwards of $600million. I even talked about fighting Khabib and Conor in the same day.
“I’d fight Khabib in the daytime and I’d fight Conor at night…
“You’ve gotta realise, I don’t fight boxers. I already proved to the world I’m the best at that.
“I don’t need to be on the pound-for-pound list. It’s no longer the pound-for-pound list, it’s the Mayweather-for-Mayweather list. I’ve surpassed that.”
Regarding a potential Manny Pacquiao rematch, Mayweather concluded: “I don’t know why they keep saying this.
“At the end of the day, he kept talking about how I was scared.
“He went and done a commercial, the ESPN commercial, told me I was scared and they was being disrespectful for years.
“It finally happened, he got cooked, now he’s begging for a rematch.
“My thing is this, if you get it done right the first time, you ain’t gotta do it again.”
