By Jeff Aranow: Many boxing fans are hoping that Floyd Mayweather Jr. (49-0, 26 KOs) doesn’t wind up facing MMA fighter Conor McGregor (0-0) this year or ever in a boxing match due to the fight potentially hurting the sport because of it being such a gross mismatch.
Mayweather’s Tweet today in posting a fight-poster of himself and McGregor posing in the type of poster you see when a fight is taking place, it suggests that the two of them will be facing.
This is a fight that will almost surely see inflated PPV prices in the $100 range that we saw for the Mayweather vs. Pacquiao fight last year in May. The reason for that is because McGregor is arguably the biggest star in MMA, and Mayweather is clearly proven himself to be the biggest name in boxing. For that reason, we could very well see the PPV price going for $100 per household. I hope I’m wrong, but I don’t think I will be. If it’s not $100 per household, then it could be in the $90.
One reason why the PPV prices would need to be super high is that both fighters want $100 million. To get that kind of money for both fighters, the PPV prices will need to be high. There won’t be enough PPV sales for both guys to get $$100M.
Mayweather will surely not take less than nine-figures for this fight because he’s been making in the $70 million range for his lesser fights against Andre Berto and Marcos Maidana. If he can make that kind of money facing run of the mill welterweight contenders, then he’ll surely want to make $100 million at the minimum for a fight against the most popular MMA fighter in the sport.
Mayweather vs. McGregor is a worst mismatch than Mayweather’s fights against Robert Guerrero, Maidana, Ricky Hatton, Arturo Gatti and Shane Mosley. At least those guys knew how to fight and had experience in the sport. McGregor has nothing. He’s just an MMA guy that doesn’t have any experience. This fight is going to be too easy for Mayweather, and the fight fans are going to likely need to pay a premium to see the fight if it takes place.
If I were to put own price tag on a Mayweather vs. McGregor fight, I’d say it’s worth $1 dollar or 50 cents. I can’t go higher than that because I see the fight as one of exhibition type fights rather than a real fight. It’s like the worst kind of match you could imagine.
When you take two athletes from different sports and ask them to fight in the same sport that one of the two athletes fights in, then it’s going to be grossly unfair and not worth paying to see in my opinion. If Mayweather was facing the No.1 men’s tennis player in the world in a tennis match, Mayweather wouldn’t stand a chance of winning.
“Floyd Mayweather vs. Conor McGregor could be very dangerous for boxing,” says WBO middleweight champion Billy Joe Saunders.
I wouldn’t want to pay to see the match because it wouldn’t be great television due to the match being such a mismatch. Mayweather would be playing his first professional tennis match against the best in the sport. It’s the same thing with McGregor. He has no boxing experience and he’s going to be lost in a boxing ring against Mayweather.
I don’t even see McGregor having a puncher’s chance because he’s unskilled. I saw how he looked in his sparring match against Chris Van Heerden, and he looked dreadful. Van Heerden looked like he would have stopped McGregor at any time if he had wanted to.
I think there is going to be a lot of casual fans that will purchase the Mayweather-McGregor fight because they won’t have a clue how much of a mismatch the fight will be. These will be casual boxing and casual MMA fans.
They won’t know it’s a mismatch until after they’ve paid to see the fight and discover that McGregor didn’t belong in the same ring with Mayweather.
I hope that this match won’t hurt future PPV sales for boxing long term because of angry fans being upset about the fight turning out to be a one-sided affair. It’s impossible to educate casual fans because they don’t follow the sports close enough to know that it’s going to be a terrible fight.