By Allan Fox: Conor McGregor, one of the best fighters in UFC, says he’s still interested in fighting boxing superstar Floyd Mayweather Jr. if he comes up with the money to make the fight happen. McGregor, 27, reportedly wants a 50-50 deal to fight Mayweather, and he says he would go into the match confident that he would beat him in a boxing ring.
The one sticking point that could prevent the Mayweather vs. McGregor fight from ever taking place is the money that Mayweather would want for the fight to happen.
Mayweather wants $100 million, and that’s not going to happen if McGregor is getting a 50-50 deal. as popular as the fight between them might be, it’s not likely going to bring in $200 million. Mayweather has been gone too long from the sport, and his last two fights against Andre Berto and Manny Pacquiao were disappointing affairs with Mayweather not taking any chances to entertain the paying fans.
Mayweather might have burned his bridges with a lot of fans permanently. Even if he does fight McGregor, there’s a chance that it doesn’t sell. Mayweather would likely need a huge guarantee from Showtime or HBO to get his $100 million, and those networks might not be too eager in paying him that kind of money for what shapes up to be a mismatch. McGregor looked terrible in a recent sparring session with boxer Chris Van Heerden. McGregor appeared to be getting toyed with by Van Heerden during the sparring session. Unless McGregor could make huge improvements in his game, he would be trounced by Mayweather.
“Right now, I have Floyd running around the Showtime [Network] offices gathering my money,” said McGregor to espn.com. “That’s what he’s doing. He’s running around the Showtime offices, begging those executives to come up with the $100 million cash he needs to fight me. As soon as he gets my money, we can fight.”
McGregor will be fighting next Saturday, on August 20 against Nick Diaz in a rematch at UFC 202. Win or lose, McGregor is expected to be back fighting in December for another UFC match. If a Mayweather vs. McGregor fight is going to take place, then it’s going to need to happen in 2017, because McGregor is all booked up.
A boxing match between Mayweather and McGregor would involve McGregor’s promoters at UFC co-promoting the fight. With two promoters involved, it would further make the fight unlikely to happen.
Mayweather vs. McGregor would attract a lot of MMA fans, but probably not a lot of boxing fans, because they’re likely not familiar with McGregor. Fans also aren’t going to be interested in paying $100 to see Mayweather fight an MMA guy that has never fought a professional fight before in his career. It’s nice that McGregor is a good MMA types of fighter, but those guys don’t do well when they try and change sports to pick up boxing.
If McGregor could prove himself against a top welterweight like Keith Thurman or Errol Spence Jr. first, then it might be a fight that would attract fans to want to purchase the fight. But there’s no way that McGregor would take a risky fight for small money against Spence or Thurman, because he’d likely get knocked out quickly for little money.
“I would not show up not confident [for a boxing match]. I would show up to kill that man and take that win, 100 percent. Why dominate one world when you can dominate two? We’ll see how that plays out,” said McGregor.
A match between Mayweather and McGregor would likely hurt the sport of boxing, because it would very likely be expensive to see on pay-per-view in going for $100, and the fight itself would see Mayweather coasting in 1st gear and not stepping on the gas to get an over-matched McGregor out of there like he should. It would be far worse than Mayweather’s mismatch against Andre Berto last September.
Mayweather just toyed with Berto and acted like he wasn’t even trying. To see Mayweather fighting with minimal effort, clowning and not stepping on the gas, it rubbed a lot of fans the wrong way. They wanted to be entertained for the money they paid to see Mayweather and Berto, and instead they got a boring fight for 12 rounds.
It would be very, very surprising if Showtime came up with Mayweather’s $100 million asking price for the fight. They would need to come up with far more than that though if McGregor keeps insisting on a 50-50 deal. Showtime would need to dig deep to come up with the kind of money that Mayweather and McGregor wants for them to fight.
McGregor is reportedly getting $1 million for his fight against Diaz next Saturday. However, he’ll wind up making a lot more than that from the PPV upside after it’s over with. The fight might bring in over 1 million PPV buys.
It wouldn’t sit right with a lot of fans of the sport if Mayweather goes for win No.50 against a complete novice in McGregor. I’m not sure how the fight could even be allowed to happen unless it was seen as a tune-up or an exhibition match. McGregor would be going into the fight with a 0-0 record for Mayweather to fight for win No.50, and that’s note even sporting. When you get fighters looking to fight novices in order to get paydays and to pad their won-lost record, it sends a bad message to the fans of the sport. If a baseball player looking to break the homerun record played against a new team with minor league players, it wouldn’t be appreciated by fans if the baseball player broke the homerun record playing that team.