Paulie Malignaggi won’t release any secrets from his training sessions with Conor McGregor but he’s not holding back much else.
The former two-division boxing champion exited McGregor’s training camp last week after the UFC lightweight champion released photos from their most recent sparring match that didn’t paint Malignaggi in the most flattering light.
One photo in particular rubbed Malignaggi the wrong way as it appeared he was knocked down during the sparring session, which he later refuted as a shove to the ground.
“He knows and I know it wasn’t from a punch,” Malignaggi told FOX 5 in New York. “He was actually frustrated from getting beat up that particular day and that was actually a shove down, a push down. I think even the referee wasn’t allowed to talk about it. Listen, I think at the end of the day sparring should stay in the gym.
“I wouldn’t have went around talking about how I beat up Conor McGregor on Tuesday if I wasn’t forced to.”
Malignaggi further detailed his issues with McGregor including his tendency not to listen to anybody regarding his training as he’s preparing for the showdown with Floyd Mayweather on Aug. 26.
According to Malignaggi, McGregor didn’t seem to listen to criticism about his style or what he was doing right or wrong during the sparring session.
“My problem with Conor is his arrogance,” Malignaggi said. “His arrogance gets to a point where he can’t make progress, where he can’t learn. He just wants a bunch of yes men around him. He doesn’t want to be told he’s doing something wrong. He doesn’t want to be told he needs to make progress or he needs to change certain things. Whatever he’s doing, he wants to be told how great he’s doing.”
In addition to that, Malignaggi claims that McGregor isn’t exactly sparing no expense when it comes to his training camp to get ready for Mayweather despite the tremendous payday he’s expected to receive from the fight.
Malignaggi went as far as saying that McGregor was not taking care of his sparring partners the way a professional fighter should, especially with the magnitude of the upcoming fight he’s got later this month.
“My problem wasn’t just with the sparring but how he treats people, how he treats the other sparring partners. He’s a bit on the cheap side,” Malignaggi said. “You have $100 million fight, I think you could splurge a little bit more on training camp, especially with the way you treat sparring partners and living quarters and what not.
“I asked for nothing, no special treatment. I wanted to be like the sparring partners. In a token of good faith, I wanted to go over there and stay with the sparring partners. I didn’t negotiate my price. Whatever first price they gave me, I accepted that as far as payment was concerned, which I never got paid by the way cause I left. I never tried to make things difficult for them but I assumed things would be at least under a moderate living conditions. A little bit on the cheap side.”
The retired boxer then went one step further by saying McGregor’s frugal tendencies went beyond anything he had seen previously during his career.
“I’ve never seen such a cheap guy in my life,” Malignaggi said. “In all my training camps, I was blown away, the treatment this guy gave everybody. He made sure he rented himself a Lamborghini in Vegas.”
While he was clearly not happy with how his experience with McGregor ended, Malignaggi promised that he wouldn’t release any strategic or tactical information about his sparring sessions with the UFC champion until the night of his fight with Mayweather.
Malignaggi is part of the Showtime broadcast team that will work the Mayweather vs. McGregor pay-per-view and he stated at that point everything that happened in the gym will be fair game to discuss but not until then.
