World super-middleweight boxing contender George Groves has revealed he'd "love a crack" at UFC featherweight champion Conor McGregor, should the Irishman stick about at 170lbs.
The 27-year-old Londoner is a massive MMA fan, and an avid follower of the UFC.
Speaking at the launch of EA Sports UFC 2, Groves, who stopped Italian Andrea Di Luisa in his last bout in the ring, told the Star:
If McGregor is going to come to float around my weight and wants to do a pay-per-view fight and he wants to swear at me and call me names then I'd love to have a crack (at him).
Groves' career has stagnated slightly since his two stoppage defeats to Carl Froch - the first of which was highly controversial. For a man who seemingly had the majority of the UK at his feet during Sky Sports' relentless hype of the pair's first clash, it's been a difficult two years, with many now regarding him as a mouth who lacks world-level ability.
To be fair, if you emerge as the least likeable fighter after two fights with Carl Froch, you've put a foot wrong somewhere.
The Froch fights have somewhat warped Groves' public persona from 'a quiet Hammersmith lad' to somewhat of a gobshite, but the former European champion did display an uncanny ability to get under Froch's typically thick skin, not in a dissimilar manner to the UFC's felled poster boy and his own opponents. It was all about insecurities for Groves, and where it comes to questions about McGregor he's at it again:
I think it'd make for a very interesting fight. And as I say, with him being predominantly a striker that's a huge thing as well.
So he ain't gonna try and take me down. Unless he's tired and he wants to tap out.
But 'Saint' did express a lot of admiration for the brash Dub, citing fitness and out-of-octagon excursions as mitigating factors in McGregor's defeat to Nate Diaz ealrier this month:
I like him. He's ballsy and nuts and he doesn't care.
I think he was unfit for that last fight, he looked it to me anyway. He's always out and about and he's always up to something. Really, if I was in a big fight, you're in the gym and you're in bed. It's a boring life, you enjoy it after your fight or you enjoy it after you career - not in between.
It'd be hard to be him I'm sure. But I think probably losing will be the best thing for him now because then he'll know he can't get away with the stuff he's probably got away with before.
You don't know that you're doing something wrong until you make a mistake.
Groves regularly practices Jiu-Jitsu and has done a lot of kickboxing, explaining that he views a switch to UFC as a genuine possibility in the coming years while acknowledging that focusing on MMA would be an extremely difficult endeavour.
You can read his full interview with the Star, here.
