By Allan Fox: UFC president Dana White says that he doubts the fight between UFC star Conor McGregor and boxing superstar Floyd Mayweather Jr. will ever take place between them. First of all, White says that the 28-year-old McGregor is under contract with him and his UFC organization.
Secondly, if Mayweather does want to fight McGregor, it would need to take place under MMA rules instead of boxing rules, which means that Mayweather would be dealing with being kicked and elbowed by McGregor in the fight. White says that would be for starters. He doesn’t say whether there would be grappling and submission holds allowed in the fight.
If that were the case, it would be impossible for the two fighters to face each other, considering it would take years for Mayweather to learn how to wrestle and use the submission holds that MMA fighters use in their contests. Mayweather is 39-years-old, and he doesn’t have years to learn how to wrestle, kick, and elbow like MMA fighters.
White said this to TMZ.com about a potential fight between Mayweather and McGregor:
“No, I never thought it was going to happen,” said Dana White about the Mayweather vs. McGregor fight. “Two totally different sports. They seem to want the money, but I don’t know how bad they want to make that a reality. Listen, Conor is under contract with me. We can start with kicks, punches and elbows. That’s right [the Mayweather vs. McGregor fight would be under MMA rules]. Kicks, punches and elbows. He [Mayweather] doesn’t have to learn anything, but he’s going to get kicked and elbowed.”
You can understand it from White’s perspective why it wouldn’t be a good idea for him to give McGregor the green light to fight Mayweather in a boxing ring. It would be a total massacre. A one-sided loss for McGregor to Mayweather might cause MMA fans to lose interest in paying to see McGregor fight. That’s not a good thing for White and for UFC.
They have a huge star in McGregor. It would be a terrible idea for them to let McGregor get clowned by Mayweather inside a boxing ring. Even if there was a handicap given to McGregor in some way to make the fight against Mayweather more even, it would still be a mismatch. I don’t know what handicap that would make it an even fight. You could stay that Mayweather can’t use his right hand to throw punches. Even then, Mayweather would pick McGregor apart with jabs and left hooks all night long. It wouldn’t be fair.
If you saw the sparring between McGregor and boxer Chris Van Heerden recently, McGregor does not have the boxing skills to compete with Mayweather. Van Heerden was toying with McGregor during the sparring session, and Van Heerden isn’t a highly ranked fighter. McGregor would be hopefully over-matched inside the ring with a guy like Mayweather. The fight would be over with as soon as Mayweather wanted it to, because McGregor does have the skills for boxing.
I think it would be bad news for the sport if Mayweather fought a novice like McGregor, because the fight would be on pay-per-view and a lot of fans would purchase it, thinking it would be a competitive fight. When it turns out to be a mismatch, the fans would likely react in anger like they did with Mayweather’s fight against Manny Pacquiao last year.
