McGregor’s team hire referee Joe Cortez

McGregor’s team has retained the services of retired Hall of Fame referee Joe Cortez. Cortez will work for six weeks with McGregor and his team, conducting eight and twelve round fight simulations – where Cortez reads the rules and initial warnings, basically recreating a scenario similar to a professional boxing match. Cortez has worked in 986 professional bouts, of which 176 were world title fights.

They (McGregor’s group) were looking for a referee with a broad knowledge of the rules…for me it’s an honor. I’m working with McGregor as a unified boxing advisor. My job is to teach him not to commit any mistakes during his fight against Mayweather Jr…This will be a fight between a boxer and a mixed martial arts specialist. As I said, my role will be to prepare McGregor so that he does not commit any breach of the rules on the day of the fight. It’s an opportunity to recreate fights and their rules. He is a fighter who is learning very fast and has previous experience in fights and is moving quite well. The only thing I can say is that it will be an interesting fight.