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Former undisputed heavyweight champion Mike Tyson has given high praise to UFC superstar Conor McGregor for his boxing performance against Floyd Mayweather.
McGregor made his boxing debut back in August of 2017, when he faced Mayweather in a junior middleweight contest at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas.
McGregor started well in the early rounds, before Mayweather began to break him down. Mayweather eventually stopped him in the tenth round.
Their Showtime Pay-Per-View vent generated over 4 million buys – the second highest PPV buyrate in history.
At the time of the bout, Mayweather was 40-years-old and coming back from a two year layoff.
However, Tyson believes McGregor is not given enough credit for stepping in the boxing ring for the first time and lasting ten rounds with an all-time great.
“Listen, (it was a spectacle) but this is where it’s not a spectacle – it’s a spectacle but this is where it’s not: he never really had a boxing match in his life, right? He didn’t have a boxing match (and) he went 10 rounds with the greatest fighter in the last 100 years of boxing,” Tyson said on his Hotboxin’ podcast.
“Think about that. . . He went 10 rounds, scored punches on the greatest fighter in the last 100 years. Did he do something? Did he accomplish something? People ain’t looking . . . but look what he had to fight against and look what he did when he fought against it. Imagine a guy never had a boxing match and he’s fighting boxing with me. He goes 10 rounds and he’s fighting me and we’re fighting. Imagine if he did (go 10 rounds) and we’re fighting and I’m doing my thing. That’s a bad motherf–ker.
“First fight, 10 rounds with the champ, the best champ in the last 50 years or something like that. Pfft, that’s the winner of the fight! That’s the winner. This should’ve been a one round, two round fight. Floyd should’ve took it easy, (but) he had to sweat, he had to fight him. He had to fight somebody who was throwing back.”