Paulie Malignaggi's public diatribe against Conor McGregor continues at pace. Having quit the McGregor camp a week ago over the leaking of photos from sparring, intended in Malignaggi's opinion to show McGregor in a false light, he has creditably kept hi promise to remain shtum on McGregor's tactics in the ring.
He has, however, unloaded on just about everything else. The weekend saw a tweet storm in which he claimed that McGregor "whimpered like a girl" when hit to the body, and that any praise Malignaggi may have previously given him was merely an attempt to avoid him looking bad.
He appeared for a full hour on Ariel Helwani's MMA Hour last night, in which he continued to vent against McGregor and his team. The organisation of the whole thing upset Malignaggi, and riled at the accommodation he was given:
It’s in a dilapidated neighborhood. It’s a rundown house. I mean, yeah, it works. But it’s not really what you expect. … It reminded me of some kind of crack house that had been barely renovated a little bit.
He also complained about the lack of privacy at the sparring sessions, as Dana White and Lorenzo Feritta were among those present for the sessions. Having sparred once in Vegas, McGregor then cancelled a second session, at which point Malignaggi returned to New York to do some work for Showtime. He then returned to the McGregor camp to spar again, as planned, and it was here that things went into meltdown.
I get off the plane the following Monday [July 31], I land in Vegas and they tell me, ‘You’re going 12 [rounds] tomorrow.’ Now, for people who aren’t familiar with a boxing training camp, no sparring partner is ever expected to do 12 [rounds] straight.
No sparring partner is expected [to do that]. The fighter in camp does 12 straight, but when the fighter in camp does 12 straight he’ll do like four with one guy then alternate and bring in another guy for five then maybe the last guy for three and so on and so forth. You break them up. That does two things: You’re getting the sparring partners all at their best without over-fatiguing and then you’re getting each guy fresh while you’re tiring, so it puts you in situations where you have to be uncomfortable. You have to start getting comfortable being uncomfortable. … You build that character in camp.
In his mind, looking back, he probably thought, ‘Paulie had a tough time getting through eight [rounds], I’m gonna set him up for 12. I get to the gym the next day and he has all kinds of dignitaries there. He’s got [former UFC chairman] Lorenzo Fertitta there, he’s got [UFC president] Dana White there, he’s got his agent there, he’s got a couple of other people I don’t know there.
Another thing checked off in my mind because usually sparring was so private I couldn’t even bring in a trainer for my corner. I’d just have other sparring partners work my corner. It was so private that when you walk into the gym you have to leave your phone in a box so nobody could sneak pictures or record.
It was so private, yet he was having some dignitaries come in on this particular evening. Again, I thought to myself, ‘This guy thinks he’s going to stop me tonight. He’s banking on catching a guy that could barely go eight, and had a tough time doing the eight the first time and now he brought in all these dignitaries because they can speak about how great he looks at my expense.
This guy is all about his ego. He’s actually not trying to get better. He’s got a bunch of yes men in his corner who tell him he’s doing good even if he’s doing bad. It’s all about that, he always thinks he’s doing good even when he’s not. It’s just about him and cheerleading.
It was during that sparring session the infamous knockdown photo was taken, at a time which Malignaggi called "one of his [McGregor's] worst moments":
He pushed me down on the floor to try and catch a break. The instant I went down, I got up, and I remember I continued to trash talk, I said, ‘Sup buddy, you needed a break?’… I started taking it right to him right after that, saying ‘There’s no breaks here, you don’t get no breaks,’ and I hit him with more body shots, I said ‘Take those, they don’t feel good.’ So I started hearing a whimper with the body shots too.
Malignaggi went on to say that the pair finished the full 12 rounds, at which he felt that any potential animosity had been dissolved by mutual respect. They posed for a photo in the ring, explained compliments in the changing room....and then it kicked off.
I had this conversation with Conor after the second sparring in the dressing room and this is probably where I realized what a dickhead this guy is because at that moment you just did 12 hard rounds and there’s that respect I’m feeling, at least, you know?
He looks at me, and I expected a, ‘alright, Paulie, you got it, let’s just keep this good work going.’ Instead, he looks at me and he gives me this smirk, smile, laughs at me and he starts walking away from me and he puts his hands in the air and he gives me his back. He’s walking away towards the showers and he’s like, ‘Haha, I don’t know Paulie. We got some good ones in those last two rounds. I don’t know about that.
At this point I’m waiting for Ashton Kutcher to walk into the dressing rooms and tell me I got Punk’d because I thought it was a joke. I thought there was no way this guy is that much of an asshole.
After the leaking of the photo followed that exchange [McGregor had texted Malignaggi the very picture hours before the leak], Malignaggi decided that enough was enough.
I said this guy’s just a piece of shit. I can’t deal with this. His team is a bunch of piece of fucking cheerleaders. They’re not improving him. They’re not getting him better. They’re just telling him he’s doing good even if he’s not. I don’t need to be around these people. It’s not like they brought me in for anything tactical like everybody thought they would.
In addition to all of that, Malignaggi called McGregor a "scumbag".
You can watch all of the Paul Malignaggi rant against Conor McGregor below.
See Also: Pure Antics From Vasyl Lomachenko As He Gets Bored During Fight
