Dana White discusses the film of Conor McGregor sparring with Paulie Malignaggi

After releasing sparring footage of Conor McGregor knocking down Paulie Malignaggi, Dana White explains the reasons why he released the film and his thoughts surrounding the fight.

Most of the talk surrounding Conor McGregor in the last few days have been circulating around his training and in particular, his sparring session with former boxing world champion Paulie Malignaggi. The debate regarding a knockdown with Malignaggi during a sparring session to prepare for McGregor’s fight against Floyd Mayweather was put to rest after UFC president Dana White released a short clip of that sparring session on Saturday.

Malignaggi has been vocal on Twitter and also on the most recent episode of The MMA Hour with Ariel Helwani to tell his side of the knockdown story. He says the footage was highly edited and he had beaten McGregor for the majority of the sparring session. Malignaggi is insistent that the knockdown was not a knockdown at all and instead calls it a shove. White spoke with Sky Sports about this.

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“What am I, Steven Spielberg?” White quipped. “Come on, it’s footage of actual sparring. I was there for all twelve rounds and Paulie has said some crazy things, some bad things about me, I felt sorry for the guy. It was a one-way beating.”

The clip released by White has been scrutinized as being too short for the public to gain any accurate perspective on the fight.

“I have no problem releasing the full tape,” White said. “The problem is Conor doesn’t want Mayweather to see everything he is working on.”

There have been rumors following this knockdown scandal that it could set up a future fight between Conor McGregor and Paulie Malignaggi following the fight with Mayweather. To this White said, “I saw that fight already and it was very one-sided.”