Mayweather-McGregor: Is it worth $100 on PPV?

By Boxing News - 06/24/2017 - Comments

Image: Mayweather-McGregor: Is it worth $100 on PPV?

By Allan Fox: The August 26th circus fight between inexperienced novice fighter Conor McGregor and the biggest star in boxing Floyd Mayweather Jr. will be going for around $100 on Showtime PPV, according to ESPN. The price of the fight is going to leave a lot of fans put off with having to pay such a steep price for a contest that could leave them with very little value.

With that kind of money, the fans will be expecting a great fight. The last time boxing fans were asked to pay $100 for a PPV event, they got a boring fight between Mayweather Jr. and Manny Pacquiao in 2015. A large portion of the fans that paid to see the Mayweather-Pacquiao fight were irate at the little value they got for their money.

This time around, the fans need to be a little more open mind about what they’ll be getting for their money with the Mayweather-McGregor fight. As long as fans are good with seeing a nice mismatch with one-sided action, they should be happy with paying a high price for PPV.

The only thing that is interesting about the Mayweather-McGregor fight is how bad it’ll be. It’s one of those fights that invite criticism. For me, I’m interested in seeing it just to see how horrible a fight it is. I see it as such a bad product to be selling to fans. I see this as one of the worst fights that can be made for PPV. It would be interesting to me if you stuck McGregor in with some over-the-hill boxer like Roy Jones Jr. That would be compelling, because Jones Jr. has been knocked out a number of times in recent years. McGregor would have a puncher’s chance of beating Roy Jones Jr. But even that fight would likely be a terrible mismatch with Jones totally dominating McGregor.

If I was to put a value on a mismatch like Mayweather-McGregor, I’d say it’s maybe $1 dollar. It would depend if there was a good undercard with it. The main event between Mayweather and McGregor is worth pretty much nothing in my opinion. That’s a fight that I wouldn’t be interested in watching even on free television. But if there’s a good undercard, then it might have a little bit of value. Super featherweight champion Gervonta Davis and former WBC super middleweight champion Badou Jack are a couple of fighters that could wind up on the card.

There are a lot of rumors going around that McGregor will look to foul Mayweather and get disqualified in order to get out of the fight without being embarrassed. If McGregor takes Mayweather out with an elbow or a kick, he would dominate the headlines in the sports world. That would leave McGregor with a likely huge fine for the fouling of Mayweather, but it might still pay off. McGregor would get a lot of attention on him and his popularity would go up.

If McGregor is seen getting the better of Mayweather using his MMA skills, it would be huge and perhaps worth it for him. Hopefully the fight doesn’t end on a foul, because many of the boxing fans that paid to see a real fight will see it as a scam.

Mayweather, 40, is coming out of a 2-year retirement to fight MGregor. It’s not the fight that fans had envisioned Mayweather taking. The fans wanted Mayweather to face a quality fighter from the boxing world like Gennady “GGG” Golovkin, Saul Canelo Alvarez, Keith Thurman or Pacquiao. Fighting McGregor in a boxing event leaves a bad taste in the mouth of knowledgeable fans. Mayweather doesn’t need the hardcore boxing fans for him to do well fighting McGregor.

Mayweather is counting on the casual fans that don’t follow the sport of boxing and MMA to be the ones that will purchase his fight with McGregor at a steep price of $100. If the fans knew what a mismatch it is, they likely wouldn’t purchase it. McGregor makes his first fight as a pro against Mayweather. You can’t count McGregor’s fights in the UFC as being helpful to him in a boxing ring, because the skill level of MMA fighters is very basic and is arguably more like barroom brawling. It’s not helpful for preparing an MMA fighter to take on a high level boxer like Mayweather.

If Mayweather knocks McGregor out in the first 6 rounds, I think there’s going to be a lot of agy boxing and MMA fans feeling like they were ripped off. The only way the fans are going to feel like they got a good product is if the fight is extended into the later rounds in a match that is competitive.

Unfortunately, I don’t know how McG4regor can be competitive with a fighter like Mayweather because the skill level between them is so far apart. McGregor recently sparred with boxer Chris Van Heerden, and he was getting worked over by him. McGregor looked like an MMA fighter with no idea how to fight in a boxing ring. Van Heerden did pretty much whatever he wanted in the ring. Van Heerden didn’t look like he was in fighting shape, and yet was still able to hit McGregor at will with his shots.

McGregor is pretty good at talking. He’ll make the press conferences and weigh-in interesting. I’m not sure what Mayweather will bring to the buildup to the fight, because he repeats himself a lot. You get a lot of ‘He’s a really tough competitor’ and ‘He must have done something right for him to get to this level’ type quotes from Mayweather. Those quotes are almost guaranteed for Mayweather to use over and over again in the 2 months that fans have to wait for this mismatch to take place.

Mayweather is good during the reality TV episodes on Showtime. He’s interesting to watch when he’s not using the same quotes. I got the impression that Mayweather just wanted to show off his wealth in the buildup to his fights against Andre Berto and Manny Pacquiao rather than talk about the fights, which both turned out to be VERY BORING mismatches.

It’s hard for me to wrap my teeth around the fact that Mayweather vs. McGregor could break the pay-per-view record of 4.6 million buys set by Mayweather and Pacquiao. The boxing fans are going to be paying to make Mayweather and McGregor incredibly rich. Both fighters will be walking away potentially with over $100 million for what amounts to be little more than a one-sided mismatch.

The fight counts as a professional fight and not an exhibition, but it’s bad news when you have world class fighters taking on novices making their first pro appearance. McGregor will be fighting for the first and possibly the time in a boxing ring. Mayweather will be going back into retirement following the fight. That doesn’t mean Mayweather will stay retired. He’ll likely come back if he finds someone that he believes he can create a lot of interest fighting.

It would likely need to be someone that Mayweather feels he can beat. There are no soft targets that are super popular in the boxing world right now, so that might explain why Mayweather is focusing only on McGregor. He’s a soft target due to his inexperience in boxing. McGregor’s career as a PPV fighter has soared in his last 4 fights with him bring in 1.2 million, 1.5M, 1.6M and 1.3M buys. McGregor’s popularity right now is better than Mayweather’s was though most of his fights as a PPV fighter.

Mayweather was involved in occasional big money PPV fights in the past against the likes of Pacquiao, Canelo Alvarez, Miguel Cotto, Shane Mosley and Oscar De La Hoya. But for the most part, Mayweather’s fights didn’t bring in huge numbers. Mayweather was never able to bring in steadily good PPV numbers like McGregor is doing right now. Just based on where McGregor is compared to Mayweather, I think it’s fair to say that McGregor should be the one getting the bigger split of the purse. Mayweather will likely be getting the bigger split of the revenue. I don’t think that’s fair to McGregor, because his PPV numbers are definitely better in terms of consecutive fights.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L9jlOLuTpUs