Floyd Mayweather's fight with UFC star Conor McGregor is 'good for boxing', says Carl Frampton

Frampton thinks that the fight will be better than the vast majority of contests

Northern Irish boxer Carl Frampton has said that Floyd Mayweather’s upcoming fight against UFC star Conor McGregor is “good for boxing” – so long as the Irishman doesn’t stun the world and win.

Mayweather is coming out of retirement to box McGregor in Las Vegas on August 26 and although the fight is expected to become one of the most lucrative in history, a number of high-profile personalities from the boxing community have expressed their disdain for the contest.

Bernard Hopkins ridiculed the bout as a “fake news fight” earlier this week, while Manny Pacquiao – who will fight Jeff Horn in a WBO welterweight championship fight this weekend – warned fans that watching McGregor lose to Mayweather will likely be “very boring”.

But Frampton, a former two-weight world champion who will fight Andrés Gutiérrez in a Belfast homecoming fight at the SSE Arena on July 29, has defended the contest.

“I don’t think that the fight is bad for boxing,” he said on the BBC Radio 5 Live show At Home with Colin Murray.

“It’s an event that people want to go and see. It gets people talking about boxing – so how can that be bad for boxing?”

Frampton added that the fight will likely justify its high pay-per-view (PPV) cost, unlike the majority of other boxing shows which charge a high price without featuring any competitive action.


 Frampton thinks the fight is good for boxing 
 (Getty)

Although he did add one caveat.

“You look at what’s happening now, it’s almost like any show that is half decent has to be on pay per view, and you have to pay extra money to watch it,” Frampton said.

“Some of the stuff that we are getting fed on TV at the minute is nonsense. I watched a show the other night which I won’t mention, but it was terrible. It was brutal and hard to watch. It was just a line of guys in the red corner beating up these guys with odds of one to a hundred the whole way through the bill.

“It is nonsense, it really is nonsense, and that isn’t good for boxing.

“But I think Mayweather vs McGregor cannot be anything but good for boxing – unless McGregor wins. And then it is bad because we all look like mugs, do you know what I mean? But I don’t think that he will.”