Rory McIlroy has always gone with the “tell-it-like-it-is” approach with the media, sometimes to his detriment. But what he said in his pre-fight predictions for the Conor McGregor vs. Floyd Mayweather Jr. boxing match are a level of keeping-it-real that even he hasn’t touched before, raising some eyebrows.

When asked about the upcoming fight on Saturday, August 28, McIlroy — who’s friendly with McGregor, a fellow Irishman — expressed concern that the fight could possibly be fixed. Here’s what McIlroy said on the matter during a press conference at the 2017 Northern Trust Open.

“I’m interested just to see how it all plays out, but I just fear that they do all this trash-talking and they go behind the scenes and they are having a laugh and thinking: I can’t believe we are talking all this public for a ride. We are all buying into it and they are like, can you believe these people believe this? I just hope it doesn’t turn into it and I hope it’s not in any way fixed.”

Certainly, with all of the media hoopla and money at stake, there could be some concern about legitimacy, or the two fighters setting up a rematch. But McIlroy raising that concern is noteworthy given the fact they at least know each other.

The betting odds for the fight are also… odd. When betting odds opened for the fight, Mayweather was a -2250 favorite on OddsShark, a popular betting website. That means you’d need to bet $2250 to win $100. That’s a very heavy favorite. Now, within days of the fight, Mayweather is only -400, meaning you need to bet just $400 to win $100.

What do you think?

Here’s the full transcript from what McIlroy said about the fight in his press conference:

“Certainly that’s all I’ve done is follow the build up to this thing. Now that I’m off Twitter and social media, all I do is watch YouTube videos of Conor McGregor.

I’m intrigued. He talks a good game. If you just listen to his press conferences and what he says, you would think that this guy, he’s the one with the 50-0 boxing record. It’s amazing. I’m a big admirer of him. He talks about visualization and the law of attraction and all this stuff that he believes in it and he vocalizes it, and he has the courage to say what he thinks. I’m a believer in that stuff, and I’m a big advocate of that. And some of the stuff he does wouldn’t be my cup of tea, but he believes 100 percent in himself and he believes he’s going to go out there on Saturday night and shock the world.

I’m interested just to see how it all plays out, but I just fear that they do all this trash-talking and they go behind the scenes and they are having a laugh and thinking: I can’t believe we are talking all this public for a ride. We are all buying into it and they are like, can you believe these people believe this? I just hope it doesn’t turn into it and I hope it’s not in any way fixed.

It’s amazing, like we were talking about, imagine McGregor knocks him out in the first couple of rounds. They would get even more for the rematch. The rematch would be even bigger. So it’s just — I just don’t know what that zero on Mayweather’s record is worth, and that’s the thing. That’s his legacy. If he goes down and lies down for 10 seconds at some point in that, you know, is that worth making an extra few $100 million? That’s sort of up to him.

Yeah, as you can see, I’m very knowledgeable on it. (Laughter) yeah, I’m interested about it. I’m intrigued. We’ll see how it goes.”