Leonard Ellerbe on McGregor getting a boxing license: “It’s all a game,” says McGregor “not allowed” to fight Mayweather
Floyd Mayweather’s right-hand man Leonard Ellerbe has responded to the news that UFC champ Conor McGregor has successfully obtained a license to box in the state of California. And, as expected, Ellerbe says the Super-Fight McGregor wants with Floyd Mayweather is no closer to coming to fruition simply because the MMA star can now box professionally.
Speaking with ESPN.com, Ellerbe said McGregor’s move is merely a “con job” and that the Mayweather fight will never happen because McGregor’s boss Dana White will not allow him to take the fight.
“He’s done a masterful con job to try to trick people that he could actually pull this off,” Ellerbe said of McGregor. “It’s another creative way to create more interest. It’s all a game. It’s all a calculated effort to gain more fans. He got a boxing license. Congratulations to him. Conor McGregor can say anything he wants to but he has a boss and his name is Dana White. He is under contract to the UFC and if he wanted to fight Floyd Mayweather in a boxing match he can’t because his bosses wouldn’t allow that to happen.”
So it seems very unlikely McGregor will ever get his hoped for $100 million mega-match with the boxing superstar. But will McGregor box anyway, against another opponent – and if so who? Paulie Malignaggi was the first big-name boxer to call McGregor out, but he certainly will not be the last.
White, who Ellerbe mentioned, admits he has “no idea” what McGregor is up to.
“I have no idea what Conor is doing,” White told Yahoo! Sports. “Conor is Conor. He does his thing. But he’s under contract to me. Who knows with this guy? Who knows what he’s up to? And the other thing is; it’s fun to talk about this fight [Mayweather-McGregor] and what might happen, but what commission would let that fight happen? Really, think about that.”
The general line of thinking is that if these two greats in their own field did meet in a boxing match under boxing rules, Mayweather would absolutely school McGregor. Who really wants to see that?