Paulie Malignaggi isn’t done revealing details from his infamous sparring session against Conor McGregor that eventually lead him to leave the training camp. On Monday the now retired professional boxer was a guest on The MMA Hour-show and gave more interesting information about what exactly.
“After seven (rounds), which was one of his worst rounds, he sits there and he tells me, ‘7-0 to me’. I remember walking back to my corner and yelling back at him, I said, ‘whatever school you went to they didn’t teach you how to count!’ I was feeling so good that I start yelling at Dana White ringside. I started saying, This is the bitch you brought me here?’ I said, ‘24 hours ago I was on a flight’. Then I lied a bit, I said, ‘Last week I didn’t do anything’ — I did workout that week, but of course I wanted to pump myself up,” said Malignaggi.
He then brought up the issue of the famous ‘push down’ incident that was photographed and then later released online.
“The funny thing about the push down was this — it was during one of his worst moments. He pushed me down on the floor to try and catch a break and the instant I went down I got back up. I remember when I was down I continued to trash talk. I said, ‘Buddy, you need a break?’ because Cortez had to wipe off my gloves. I started to take it to him right after that. I told him, ‘you don’t get no breaks here’, and I started to hit him with more body shots. I said, ‘take those, they don’t feel good’ and I could hear him whimper off the body shots, too,” he revealed.
After the sparring was done, the pro boxer was sure their previous differences is now water under the bridge.
“We took a picture in the ring. Everybody gave us a hand. We just did 12 hard rounds, it didn’t matter who got the better of it, there is a respect thing after you spend 36 minutes in a ring with a guy and you’re trying to beat the s**t out of each other.”
“In the dressing room I passed by Conor and he said ‘good work’ and I said ‘yeah, good work Conor.’ I thought we had buried the hatchet and I was thinking that maybe I didn’t need to be so on-edge in the camp anymore. I was hoping that because I had came with those intentions.”
But it was then and there when Malignaggi realised that McGregor was not on his side.
“Then I said, ‘Conor, do me a favor, bro. No more of these crazy pictures,’ I told Conor that it becomes very hard for me to not disclose the NDA that I have when you’re putting up pictures of me.”
“I am not one of the other sparring partners. Nobody knows who the other sparring partners are. Everyone knows who I am. When you put up a picture of me in sparring, the media rush comes to me and I have to answer questions that I don’t want to deal with. I had this conversation with Conor after the second sparring in the dressing room and this is probably when I realised what a dickhead this guy is because at that moment we had just done 12 hard rounds and there’s a respect that I’m feeling, at least.” told Malignaggi
Despite Malignaggi’s request, the Irishman decided to publish the pictures anyway.
“He looks at me, and I’m expecting, ‘you’re right, Paulie – you got it, let’s just keep this good work going.’ Instead, he looks at me and he gives me this smirk, laughs at me and he starts walking away from me. He gives me his back, he’s walking away towards the showers and he’s like, ‘Ha ha, I don’t know Paulie. We got some good ones in those last two rounds. I don’t know about that.’
“At this stage I’m waiting for Ashton Kutcher to walk into the dressing rooms and tell me I got Punk’d. I thought it was a joke. I thought there was no way this guy is that much of an asshole.”