Photo by Lucas Noonan/Premier Boxing Champions
Chris van Heerden, the second man in the ring alongside Conor McGregor in the now-infamous boxing sparring footage, recently spoke with Yahoo Sports to give his side of the story and tell why he released the full and unedited sparring video.
Van Heerden, best known in the boxing world for being a fringe contender who took a televised beatdown against the now IBF Welterweight champion, Errol Spence Jr. in 2015, also gave his prediction for the upcoming Floyd Mayweather vs. McGregor fight which goes down on Saturday, August 26, 2017.
Many people have come down hard on van Heerden for releasing the sparring footage, which–in case you needed proof– shows just how bad McGregor is in the boxing ring. But, the South African boxer states that he had initially asked for footage not to be released of the two-day sparring sessions.
“I was approached by the gym owners and I made it very clear that I didn’t want any footage out there,” said van Heerden (per Yahoo Sports).
“I was out of shape, I’d just come off holiday and I was just trying to help Conor. He didn’t pay me one dime, not one dollar. He just asked me if I could move around with him, because at that time, he was getting ready for the rematch with Nate Diaz and he wanted a big southpaw to work with.”
One can certainly understand van Heerden’s anger and frustration when he found out that footage was indeed made public, especially when you see the clips that make it look like he’s getting his ass handed to him by McGregor.
“You can imagine the press: Everyone was killing me,” said van Heerden. “I’m from South Africa, sir, and I came to America hoping to follow my dreams. Conor put that edited video out and it made me look bad. I told him, ‘I don’t appreciate that. I was doing you a favor, because I’m not your sparring partner and you didn’t pay me. I did you a favor because you asked me to help you.’ ”
In this day and age with social media trolls ready to fry anyone at the drop of a tweet, van Heerden’s reputation certainly suffered from the video that McGregor put out.
“Me being from South Africa and coming to America, I knew the first thing people were going to ask was, ‘Who is this guy Conor is working with?’ That was around the time the whole Mayweather-Conor thing got serious. I saw the marketing aspect of it, but Conor didn’t pay me and I helped him. And that first occasion was beautiful.”
Although van Heerden does give McGregor some props in terms of boxing ability, he doesn’t think that’ll translate into a win for UFC star.
“What I think is going to happen in this fight is that Conor McGregor is going to box with Floyd and try to prove to people that he is a boxer,” van Heerden said. “That is the biggest mistake he can make because you cannot outbox Floyd Mayweather. You just can’t. He will make you look silly. He’ll make you miss. He’ll literally make you look silly.”
Indeed, if McGregor thinks he’s going to have any chance of outboxing Mayweather, it’ll be a frustrating night for the man known as “Notorious.”
“Floyd is going to hit him and Floyd is going to catch him over and over and over. Floyd will make him miss so badly and I think Conor is going to get so frustrated that he’ll let his hands drop and come with his mixed martial artist’s power. He’ll drop the hands and Floyd will beat him up so badly, they’ll stop the fight.”
