[Jeff Higgins]

Mayweather is done fighting serious boxers - he proved that much in his last fight. He is now looking for a "fight" that is anything but. He's found a loudmouth MMA patsy who has convinced himself he can "box". He's lobbying to go with virtually unpadded MMA gloves, supposedly in a nod to his opponent's background. Yet the grappling that those gloves allow, the only reason for their severely compromised design as a boxing glove, will not be allowed. So Mayweather gets to box an unskilled (in boxing) opponent with a glove that would be illegal for boxing otherwise, due to fighter safety concerns. So unless they are looking for a WWF type show, if Mayweather comes in in shape and serious about it, McGregor stands a very real chance of getting pretty seriously hurt.

I know it's really no comparison, but as a kid and young man I did a fair bit of boxing in Golden Gloves and other local programs. We would see kids get in the ring with their various black belts in disciplines we couldn't even pronounce. Some sounded impressive enough and all of that, but when made to box, under boxing rules, we absolutely kicked their asses every single time. All of their go-to moves were illegal, and impossible anyway with boxing gloves.

We used to laugh at the irony of the old "kickboxing" matches. The organizations had to institute rules for how many kicks had to be thrown every round, because plain old boxing was so much more effective. Grappling and wrestling were forbidden, so between kicking and boxing, boxing was far more effective.

Take away the ground game, use the gloves that enable it, and the boxer is going to hurt the other guy. The ground game is the backbone of MMA. Make them box a boxer and it ain't gonna end well...