Conor McGregor feels stoppage was “a little early”

While he certainly isn’t calling for a rematch, or anything like it, Conor McGregor believes he was stopped too early last night in his mega-money Las Vegas clash with Floyd Mayweather.

McGregor was stopped standing in the tenth round a the T-Mobile Arena, with referee Robert Byrd jumping in as Mayweather’s slowly building pressure saw the Irishman start to ship increased punishment.

In the 60-or-so seconds that were completed in the final round, Mayweather landed 20 of 26 power shots as McGregor somewhat unravelled.

This also followed the ninth round, a dominant stanza for Mayweather [50(27)-0] which, despite no knockdowns, he took 10-8 on two of the scorecards.

McGregor [0-1(1)] however was slightly aggrieved that he didn’t, to use a cliché, get to go out on his shield.

“I thought it was a little early of a stoppage,” said ‘The Notorious’ immediately after the fight.

“I get like that when I’m tired. I get a little wobbly and flowy. But fuck, get me into the corner and I’ll recover and I’ll come back.”

“And I’d like it to hit the floor. There’s a lot on the line here, he [Byrd] should have let me keep going I thought, but fair play to him [Mayweather].”

“I’ve been here before,” McGregor said. “I’ve been strangled on live TV and came back, so I don’t know. I would have liked him to just let it go.”

Indeed McGregor claimed that the power of Mayweather proved to be little issue for him, instead citing fatigue as the main factor behind the stoppage. The Crumlin light middleweight seemed to tire early on in the bout after out throwing ‘Money May’ in the opening rounds.

McGregor stated “that’s exactly what it is, is fatigue. That’s why I thought the ref could have just let it keep going, let me go down. Let the man put me down. Wobbly and fatigue, that’s energy, that’s not damage. I’m clear-headed.”

Adding to this in the post fight press conference, McGregor reaffirmed that “I would’ve like to have seen the end of the tenth. I think with fatigue there’s a path somewhere in the middle of fights, even with the Diaz 2 fight, I have this patch where I must overcome, I get a little wobbly, but it’s more fatigue.”

“If you look at the Diaz 2 fight, I came through that, I came back in round four and round five. I would have liked to see the end of round ten and see where it brought us.”

“I thought the referee did a great job as well, I do feel it was a little early, but I respect his decision.”