Exec: Showtime passed on McGregor-Malignaggi footage because it was pre-edited
Showtime has washed its hands of the ongoing saga between Conor McGregor and Paulie Malignaggi.
Malignaggi recently left McGregor's camp for an upcoming date with Floyd Mayweather over unflattering photos taken during a sparring session. UFC president Dana White later released video of the retired boxer suffering an apparent knockdown at McGregor's hands.
Malignaggi will also be calling the bout for Showtime, and footage of the allegedly one-sided session hasn't appeared in its "All Access" series depicting the leadup to the fight. White claims the network refused to air a bevy of footage of the allegedly one-sided session in order to protect Malignaggi.
That's not the case, Showtime executive Stephen Espinoza told Sporting News' Steven Muehlhausen this week. While the network had entertained airing the footage, the video it received apparently consisted of about a minute of clips that had already been edited together. Espinoza and Co. opted to not to use it, much to the chagrin of McGregor's camp.
"Dana's misinformed here because we were dealing directly with Conor's team on this," Espinoza told Sporting News' Steven Muehlhausen. "We did not receive as Dana said, a ton of footage. We received a few short clips, roughly a minute total, which were provided by the Conor camp. We reviewed them and were very interested in using them and including them in 'All Access.'
"But it was a series of sort of spliced-together McGregor highlights, eight or nine seconds each. We didn't want to use the whole thing. It was sort of repetitive. We were told if we didn't use the whole segment as they edited it then we couldn't use it at all. So in the end, Conor's camp withheld permission for us to use it. Otherwise we definitely wanted to use it. There was no intent to protect Paulie. We just wanted to cut some of the clips because it was pretty redundant, repetitive stuff."
Malignaggi insists the photos and video should never have been released and asserts that it was a pushdown, not a knockdown. He's even angled for a grudge match against McGregor, with the UFC champ telling him to take a number in rebuttal.
McGregor meets Mayweather on Aug. 26 in Las Vegas.
- With h/t to MMA Fighting