Floyd posts McGregor vs. Mayweather PPV fight poster on Instagram

By Boxing News - 05/30/2016 - Comments

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By Allan Fox: In what has to be interpreted as a huge hint by Floyd Mayweather Jr. that he plans on going through with his circus fight against MMA fighter Conor McGregor, Mayweather posted a fight poster of him and McGregor on his Instagram last night. Mayweather is calling it a Mayweather vs. McGregor fight on pay-per-view.

Mayweather wouldn’t have posted this Instragram picture if he wasn’t interested in fighting the 27-year-old McGregor, who has never fought in a boxing match in his life. The closest thing to a boxing match for McGregor was his recent sparring session with former IBO welterweight champion Chris Van Heerden, which McGregor was schooled badly in.

Mayweather seems to want the fight with McGregor, and must be counting on a lot of boxing and MMA fans purchasing it because if he didn’t, he wouldn’t be wasting his time with the fight.

If the Mayweather vs. McGregor fight is going to take place, it’s going to require one of the cable networks to stick their necks out and come up with $100 million for each fighter, because that’s what they both want for the fight. McGregor wants $100 million for the fight just like Mayweather. The likelihood of there being a $200 million pot for money for the two fighters to split half and half between then is very, very doubtful.

There might be a little over $100 million, but $200 million? I don’t think so. But if there’s a cable network that doesn’t mind taking a loss on the fight so that both guys can get $100 million each, it might be a doable fight. I don’t see Mayweather backing down and taking less than the $100 million that he’s said is his asking price for the fight. If Mayweather takes $70 million in order to accommodate McGregor, then the fight won’t be worth it for him. Mayweather can probably make that kind of money fighting Andre Berto again or one of the other beatable welterweights.

Speaking for myself, I’ve never seen McGregor fight before. I don’t watch MMA fights but I’ve seen them in the past and was bored with all the wrestling and submission holds. I think the majority of the boxing fans will have never seen McGregor either. This means that Mayweather will need the MMA fans to make this thing a success because he’ll be lucky if he can get 400,000 buys from boxing fans.

McGregor’s last fight against Nate Diaz did 1.5 million buys. So if Mayweather can get that total plus 400,000 boxing fans, he’ll have 2 million PPV buys. Mayweather has said that he thinks the fight against McGregor will do as well as his fight last year against Manny Pacquiao, which means 4.6 million PPV buys. For Mayweather’s fight against McGregor to bring in that many buys, it’s going to take a lot of marketing of the fight to the boxing fans to make them want to see Mayweather fight someone who they’ve never seen before and who has never fought a boxing match in his life.

Mayweather says his net worth is $650 million.

I don’t think the fight can make anywhere close to 4 million buys. I see it as a 2 million buy fight based on MMA people wanting to see it rather than boxing fans. This is another Mayweather vs. Andre Berto fight in terms of the fan interest from the boxing world in my view. Speaking for myself, I know I don’t want to see Mayweather fight McGregor. I wouldn’t even want to see it on free television. It’s too much like the Muhammad Ali vs. Antonio Inoki fight for me to want to see it.

For the fans that never heard of that match, the Ali-Inoki fight took place on June 26, 1976 in Tokyo, Japan. It was a fight between a boxer, Ali, and a Japanese professional wrestler, Inoki. It was a joke of a fight. Inoki spent the fight laying on his back kicking Ali in the legs each time he got near him. There was no action at all to speak of other than Inoki kicking at Ali. There were a lot of angry fans afterwards, as many of them felt they had wasted their money.

I see Mayweather vs. Mcgregor shapes up to be the same thing. It’s going to be a fight under boxing rules as far as I know, but it’s going to be a mismatch because McGregor is not going to take the time to put some professional tune-up fights together ahead of time so that he can learn how to box. He’s just going to go straight into the fight without any experience other than his MMA experience, which is basically limited to wrestling, submission holds and stand up fighting. McGregor looks slow and awkward when he stands up and fights. He doesn’t look like a skilled fighter in my view. He looks like a wrestler trying to ape what a boxer would do.