Hey, remember this?
Remember this?
People telling me Mayweather will have his hands full trying to land on McGregor -STOP IT! I respect McGregor BUT i ain’t Floyd and i landed pic.twitter.com/gd4dFi3XUU
— Chris van Heerden (@TheHeat001) June 14, 2017
Remember when Chris Van Heerden, the former world boxing champ, practically threw a fit after Conor McGregor / Conor’s Team posted a video on twitter of the two martial artists sparring with each other?
And yes, we’re STILL talking about that…
Anyway, what happened was that Conor released a video that, accord Van Heerden was intentionally “doctored” to make him “look very bad…”
Now, I’m not a huge Conor fan myself, I don’t love him, I don’t hate him, I just appreciate what he’s done for MMA as a sport and as a culture.
Whatever the circumstances really are, whether it’s Conor having a separate agenda for promoting himself and his fights (that’d be a real shocker) or if it’s Chris just being upset because he looked a bit worse for wear on the internet… Either way, both guys released separate videos, both around 1 minute long (Conor’s was 1:20, Chris’ was 0:56) and one showed Chris beating up Conor, one showed Conor beating up Chris.
Here’s Van Heerden’s full thoughts on the (fiasco) matter…
“When people ask me why I’ve released this footage now, it’s because it hurts me that there are guys like myself who have been devoted to this sport, risking our lives,” he said. “And to see McGregor, who has zero knowledge of professional boxing, make it out like he could just get out of an octagon, step in the ring and beat up the best pound-for-pound fighter out there – to just make out like our lifestyle is so easy and that anybody could do it, and then for people to be saying he has a big chance of beating Floyd. I just thought, judge for yourself.”
“Conor asked me if I minded moving around with him at some point,” van Heerden said. “I knew it was for the Nate Diaz rematch, but at that same point, the McGregor vs. Mayweather talks caught fire. For me being from South Africa, in America, I needed a way to get my name out over here.
“So, with the talks of the fight with Mayweather going on, if I moved around with Conor, I knew people were going to want to know who I was. So I said yes, but it was a big risk because I was out of shape and hadn’t trained for a month.”
“We sparred on two different occasions,” he said. “When I sparred with him on the first occasion, which was even worse than the second time, I cut his nose, but it was all fun. We weren’t in there trying to kill each other.
“The next session was the one from where the footage leaked. Conor came in with his camera people, so at the same time, I told one of my friends to take out his phone and record it too.”
“Then TMZ released the footage, and I asked the gym owner how they got their hands on it,” he said. “They said they had spoken to Conor, who said it was OK to release the footage. But nobody had ever asked for my approval.”
“Conor McGregor’s team edited and posted footage for the MacLife of the sparring session between me and Conor, and it made me look very bad,” he said. “Then the media blew up, saying ‘Conor McGregor beats up ex-world champion boxer’ and all this.”
“I was in a bad place right there,” he said. “My world was crashing down, because why would these people do this? But I had footage from my friend’s phone, so after about a week of all this, I thought I’m not going to let Conor get away with this.
“So I put out the six-minute unedited version that my friend had, and people can judge from that. I gave it to TMZ, and suddenly, people were like maybe it wasn’t as one-sided as Conor made out.”
“Once again, I was just having fun, and if I knew that was going to happen, I would have taken it way more serious,” he said. “Myself and Conor never spoke again after that footage came out, so I don’t think they were very happy with everything that went on. I think it’s because they know they done me bad first, and what goes around comes around.”
As for my thoughts on the matter, check the meme at the top of the page.