Editor note: This is a guest editorial by Thomas Matthews of Oddschecker.
Oddschecker are the leading odds comparison site, comparing markets across all major bookmakers to find the best odds.

Gennady Golovkin vs. Canelo Alvarez has the potential to rival the Joshua/Klitschko bout in April for fight of the year. The heavy hitters from Kazakhstan and Mexico respectively will go at it and most are tipping it to be a thrilling fight as opposed to the “spectacle” that was Floyd Mayweather vs. Conor McGregor last month.

But given the nature of this contest, the betting and subsequent interest in the fight has been alarmingly non-existent compared to last month’s. Oddschecker have seen an incredible disparity in the number of total bets placed, with 3,500 so far on Canelo vs. GGG compared with over 130,000 on the Mayweather McGregor show.

The round-by-round betting comparisons also give an indication of how punters are expecting the fight to go. A total of 54.3% of bets on Saturday’s fight have been on the match to be decided in round eight or further, compared with just 18.9% in Mayweather McGregor.

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On Saturday, August 26, the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas will host one of the most hyped-up events of all time. Floyd Mayweather, who retired from boxing but boasts a 49-0 record, will be taking on two-weight UFC champion Conor McGregor in a sanctioned boxing match.

This will be McGregor’s first ever meaningful boxing match, and without any of his mixed martial arts credentials on the line and a huge payday guaranteed, it could be said that the Irishman hasn’t got anything to lose. Mayweather, on the other hand, will be putting his untarnished record on the line, as well as boxing’s reputation – to an extent.

Sure he’s 40 years old and retired, but Floyd Mayweather will be taking on someone without a boxing record. Considered to be a great of the sport, a Mayweather loss would raise the standing of mixed martial arts above that of boxing in the eyes of many.

Mayweather needs to win this fight far more than McGregor does, and he’s expected to do so, but what can he expect from his upcoming opponent?

McGregor needs the knockout

Source: The Mac Life, via Twitter

At the first destination of the international four-city media tour to build-up the fight, Conor McGregor told the Los Angeles audience that he was going to knock out Floyd Mayweather in the fourth round, saying: “I am honored to be here, to give you this spectacle. His little legs, his little core, his little head, I am going to knock him out inside four rounds, mark my words.”

Many fighters, regardless of which sport they’re taking part in, will predict a round of victory during the build-up. This may be because they want to psych out their opponent and get that round in their head, or because they want their prediction to come true to receive praise from the press. In any case, they have no real way of knowing as anything can happen in the ring. Conversely, McGregor’s claim does hold some value.

Floyd Mayweather has never been defeated, never been knocked out, and has only been officially knocked down in a fight on one occasion. To add to that, the American’s last seven fights – all in Las Vegas, all wins – were decided by the judges, with only two of them not being unanimous decisions. If McGregor wants to win, he needs to knock out Mayweather.

Not only does he need to knock him out, but the Irishman should aim to do it quickly. As the fight progresses, Mayweather will simply get more comfortable up against the ropes and on the backfoot, bobbing and weaving, dodging the swings, and landing swift counter punches. It seems extremely unlikely that McGregor could defeat Mayweather in the eyes of the Las Vegas judges unless his knockout attempts achieve enough knockdowns to sway favor.

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As one would naturally assume, Floyd Mayweather – the former boxing world champion with a 49-0 record – is favored to defeat the two-weight UFC champion, Conor McGregor. Mayweather has years of boxing experience under his belt, and his defensive tactics have rendered him undefeated, whereas McGregor has never engaged in a meaningful boxing match.

So, with all of the odds stacked against him, how can the mixed martial arts star, Conor McGregor, defeat retired boxer-turned-promoter Floyd Mayweather in a sanctioned boxing match?

Mayweather lacks knockout power

Source: Sky Sports Boxing, via Twitter

Of course, if any fighter gets the right swing connecting with the right point, it can result in a knockout. However, Floyd Mayweather – who is hailed by many as one of the greatest boxers of his weight-class – hasn’t knocked an opponent out since Victor Ortiz in 2011.

Now, Mayweather has always utilized his defensive abilities to defeat opponents, but towards the end of his career, those skills became the center of his game plan. Against Manny Pacquiao, the Filipino threw in an inordinate number of punches, and yet Mayweather’s defense managed to fend many of them off – with the American winning by unanimous decision in his second home, Las Vegas.

Speaking of his second home, the last time that Mayweather fought outside of Las Vegas was in 2005, against Sharmba Mitchell in Portland. 12 of Mayweather’s last 14 fights – all in Las Vegas – have been decided by decision, with only the Ricky Hatton and Ortiz fights ending with a knockout.

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Who is a harder puncher: Floyd Mayweather, Jr or Conor McGregor? Objectively, there’s no good way to tell unless we measure their punching power output in a scientific setting – or have first-hand testimony from someone who has been punched by both. Everything else is pure speculation… and who’s better to speculate on all things combat sports than MMA’s favorite loud mouth Chael Sonnen? Watch his take on who punches harder:
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Heather

MMA & Boxing Writer | Business Development Consultant
I have been an avid viewer of Boxing and MMA for decades. Judo is the martial art that I most admire. As a teenager I practiced for a bit. This piqued my interest in MMA since 2001. Now I am on a new journey, to hit the dojo when possible. Learning how to methodically adapt to Judo as a current white belt.For 25 years I’ve worked in healthcare, and now am trying to make something that was a hobby, into a full-time endeavor.

www.fightmatrix.com

The lead-up to the upcoming boxing contest between Floyd Mayweather, Jr and two-division UFC champion Conor McGregor has been full of rumors and controversy. From accusations of racism stemming from Conor’s antics during the press tour, to the rumored payday for the fighters, to the fiasco that was McGregor’s short-lived training camp with Paul Malignaggi… Here, Conor sits down for a interview with MMA pundit Ariel Helwani, to discuss these issues and more.

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Heather

MMA & Boxing Writer | Business Development Consultant
I have been an avid viewer of Boxing and MMA for decades. Judo is the martial art that I most admire. As a teenager I practiced for a bit. This piqued my interest in MMA since 2001. Now I am on a new journey, to hit the dojo when possible. Learning how to methodically adapt to Judo as a current white belt.For 25 years I’ve worked in healthcare, and now am trying to make something that was a hobby, into a full-time endeavor.

www.fightmatrix.com

For many a boxing expert the upcoming fight between Floyd Mayweather Jr and Conor McGregor is a joke. McGregor has never had a professional boxing fight in his life and yet he is challenging arguably the greatest of all time in the sport. As of today the Notorious Irishman is 4/1 to win the bout for anyone interested in placing a bet on the Mayweather v McGregor fight.  This article looks at events that bookmakers believe are more and less likely to happen than a big upset in Las Vegas this month.

Alien existence to be proven in 2017 is    3/1

The bookmakers believe there is more chance we’ll see alien existence proven before the end of 2017 than Conor McGregor winning the fight of the year! This just shows the mammoth task that stands in front of the UFC Lightweight champion, and whether it is possible remains to be seen. McGregor has some guts going into the ring with arguably the greatest pound-for-pound boxer of all time with no professional boxing experience under his own belt.  It will take an out of this world performance from McGregor to walk out victorious.

Source: http://nypost.com/2017/04/25/aliens-may-have-existed-in-our-solar-system-long-before-us/

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On August 26, at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, Nevada, retired undefeated boxer Floyd Mayweather will be opening the lion’s den to simultaneous two-weight UFC champion Conor McGregor for a licensed boxing match. It comes as no surprise that Mayweather is heavily favored to win, and yet McGregor has made some rather lavish promises. During the international promotional tour for the fight, Conor McGregor claimed that he will knock out Floyd Mayweather in the fourth round, as reported by the Evening Standard. So, let’s examine the actual likelihood of the Irish mixed martial arts star living up to this claim.

Knockout very unlikely, let alone in the fourth

When it comes to the pure discipline of boxing, there is very little that the fighters can do to vary their game, thus what can be expected from the opposition can only stretch so far. Conor McGregor is coming from mixed martial arts, where almost anything goes, so fighters need to both utilize the available disciplines as well as be aware of those that could be used to defeat them. Floyd Mayweather has forged his 49-0 record on avoiding all that can be thrown at him in the boxing ring, so it seems unlikely that McGregor, who has never engaged in a professional boxing match, would be able to produce anything that could catch out the American.

The odds are most certainly stacked against McGregor for him just to get a knockout, regardless of what round. A lot of it is founded on Mayweather deemed to have been knocked down once in his 49-fight career, which was in 2001 against Carlos Hernandez, per Metro. In fact, with McGregor to knock out Mayweather at 8/1 as of August 2, things deemed more likely to happen by a Betway Insider study include: another planet like Earth being in existence; your job being replaced by a robot; or that we actually live in a simulation. So, as you can see, the odds are most certainly stacked against the Irishman to achieve a knockout. But should they be?
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The worlds of MMA and boxing have both been lit up at the prospect of the upcoming fight between Conor McGregor and Floyd Mayweather, as it features two fighters of genuine distinction in their respective sports. There has been an awful lot of talk about the fight, with much of it coming from the two fighters themselves, who have indulged in some seriously entertaining trash talking on social media sites over the past few months, but it will soon be time for the talking to end and the fighting to get underway. With just a month left until the fight takes place, can Conor McGregor spring one of the biggest upsets in boxing history?

Given the degree of excitement that there is about this fight it can be easy to forget how much of an underdog McGregor is going into it. Very few boxing fans or pundits give him any chance of winning, given that he is coming up against a vastly experienced boxer who has a professional record of 49 wins from 49 matches. Of course, McGregor’s record in the MMA is pretty good too as he has claimed 21 wins – 18 of them knockouts. Thus he clearly has talent, with his style based on hard counterpunches, and he also has a definite age advantage over Mayweather. Irishman McGregor is 28, making him more than a decade younger than 40-year-old Mayweather – who has emerged from a two-year retirement for this fight. McGregor’s approach is likely to be relying on taking his fancied opponent by surprise with this tactic and exploiting any early rustiness that Mayweather displays, but it is hard to see this being quite enough for him to emerge as the winner.

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