By Jeff Aranow: Floyd Mayweather Jr. will receive a guaranteed MINIMUM purse of $100 million for his fight tonight against Conor McGregor, according to the Nevada State Athletic Commission.
Mayweather also received a $100 million guaranteed purse for his fight against Manny Pacquiao in 2015. Mayweather says he wound up getting $300 million for that fight. Mayweather’s last fight against Andre Berto brought him far less money due to the boxing public not being interested in paying to see him fight a hand-picked opponent, who was on the downside of his career and had done nothing to deserve the fight other than beating Josesito Lopez, a 2nd tier fighter.
For his part, McGregor will be getting a guaranteed purse of $30 million. McGregor could make over $100 million all total from the fight. Even the $30 million is a heck of a lot more than what McGregor has been making in the UFC, where he holds 2 division titles. McGregor is sharing in the promotion of the Mayweather-McGregor event, which explains why he’ll likely wind up with over $100 million.
Mayweather is expected to make much more than when the pay-per-view results are tallied for his fight against the 29-year-old UFC star McGregor on Showtime pay-per-view from the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, Nevada. Mayweather is saying that he’s going to get $350 million for the fight. I hope he’s not upset if it comes out far less than that.
Mayweather-McGregor is predicted to shatter the all-time pay-per-view record of 4.6 million buys set by Mayweather vs. Pacquiao in May 2015. UFC president Dana White believes the Mayweather vs. McGregor fight will ultimately pull in 4.9 million buys. White is just guessing though. No one knows how well it’ll do. The fight is not lacking for publicity, that’s for sure. It’s being heavily marketed on television and on boxing and other sports sites.
The start time for Mayweather-McGregor tonight is at 9:45 p.m. ET/PT on Showtime pay-per-view. The fight is expected to be viewed by 1 billion fans worldwide. It’s an astronomical number of boxing and MMA fans that will be tuning in to watch the fight. Mayweather-McGregor will be televised on free TV in Mexico, and it’s going to have a wide audience watching the event/spectacle.
With the huge purses for Mayweather and McGregor, it’s too bad some of that money couldn’t have spent putting together a good undercard to go along with it. The Mayweather-McGregor undercard is mostly mismatches with A-side fighters being put in with B-side guys that appear to have been as the opponents. There’s not much there once you get past the co-feature bout between WBA World light heavyweight champion Nathan Cleverly vs. Badou Jack. Those guys are known by the hardcore boxing fans, but unknown to the casual fans.
These are the other fights on the card:
Yordenis Ugas vs. Thomas Dulorme – Welterweight
Gervonta Davis vs. Francisco Fonseca – Super featherweight
Andrew Tibiti vs. Steve Cunningham – Cruiserweight
Juan Heraldes vs. Jose Miguel Borrego – Welterweight
Kevin Newman II vs. Mark Anthony Hernandez – Super middleweight
Savannah Marshall vs. Sydney LeBlanc – Super middleweight
As you can see, the undercard is not a good one. We’ve seen far better in non-PPV fight cards. It just makes you wonder why they’re being cheap with the undercard. With all the money the promotion is bringing in, they could have put that money to go use in putting together a good undercard of quality match-ups instead of this sad card.
Gervonta Davis (18-0, 17 KOs) lost his IBF super featherweight title after the sanctioning body stripped the title from him when he came in 2 pounds over the 130 lb. limit last Friday for what would have been a voluntary defense against Francisco Fonseca (19-0-1, 13 KOs) tonight. The purse for Fonseca for tonight’s fight $35,000. Davis will be getting $600,000, which is not bad for a non-champion now that he’s been stripped of his IBF belt.
WBA World light heavyweight champion Nathan Cleverly (30-3, 16 KOs) will be getting $100,000 for his title defense against former WBC super middleweight champion Badou Jack (20-1-3, 12 KOs). For his part, Jack will be a whopping $750,000. It’s always interesting when the challenger’s purse winds up almost 8 times the purse of the champion.
Badou is one of Mayweather’s fighters in his Mayweather Promotions stable, which is why he’s getting the big money as the challenger. Jack recently vacated his WBC 168 lb. title following his 12 round draw against IBF super middleweight champion James DeGale last January. It’s become too hard for Jack to make the 168 lb. limit, so he’s moving up to try and broaden his horizons at light heavyweight.
It’s going to be hard for Jack to make it in this division. Even if he beats Cleverly tonight, Jack is going to have his work cut out for him in defending the WBA title. His first defense would be against #1 WBA mandatory challenger Dmitry Bivol, who has been knocking everyone out lately.
Jack might find out the hard way that the grass isn’t always greener on the other side. He might need try and find a way to move back down to super middleweight if he stays taking losses to the top guys in the 175 lb. division. There’s no question that Mayweather Promotions can match Jack against a lot of soft opposition to keep him winning, but if he wants to be a world champion, it means he’s going to need to be able to beat guys like Bivol, Sullivan Barrera and Artur Beterbiev.
I don’t think Jack can beat any of those guys. Jack has a good chance of defeating Cleverly tonight, but the odds of him keeping the World Boxing Association title for any length of time are remote at best.
Cruiserweight contender Andrew Tabiti (14-0, 12 KOs) will be getting $100,000 for his fight former cruiserweight world champion Steve Cunningham (29-8-1, 13 KOs). For his part, Cunningham will also receive $100,000 for the fight. The Tabiti-Cunningham fight will be the opening fight on the Showtime PPV televised portion of the card. Tibiti is one of Mayweather Promotions’ fighters. He looks very green, and he’s going to need a lot of improvement if he hopes to compete against the top fighters in the cruiserweight division. Right now, I don’t see him ever being a world champion in that weight class.
Welterweight Thomas Dulorme will be getting a purse of $75,000 for his fight against Yordenis Ugas. The former highly decorated Cuban amateur star Ugas will be getting $50,000. This fight will be televised on Fox rather than on the Showtime PPV portion of the card.