NEW YORK – It’s MMA’s equivalent of the Zapruder film. The clip of Conor McGregor knocking down former world boxing champion Paulie Malignaggi during a sparring session leading up to McGregor’s epic summer 2017 boxing spectacle against Floyd Mayweather was expertly leaked at just the right moment to help boost the boxing match’s mega-sales. The problem with that, if you’re Malignaggi, is that hitting the mat against a boxing neophyte doesn’t make you look good, especially if you know, as Malignaggi insists, that the full sparring film would have told a very different story. So as Malignaggi gets set to face McGregor’s buddy, Artem Lobov , in the main event of Bare Knuckle FC 6 on June 22, the touchy subject of the infamous sparring sessions is back, and it’s still clearly getting under Malignaggi’s skin. “Because he’s such a (expletive), I’ll tell you something about Conor,” Malignaggi said during Monday’s BKFC 6 news conference.
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