Floyd Mayweather Jr. vs. Conor McGregor rumored for September 16

By Boxing News - 03/27/2017 - Comments

Image: Floyd Mayweather Jr. vs. Conor McGregor rumored for September 16

By Allan Fox: Floyd Mayweather Jr. (49-0, 26 KOs) is rumored to be facing boxing novice Conor McGregor (0-0) on September 16 on pay-per-view at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, Nevada. If this dates out to be reality, Mayweather has plenty of time to get ready for the fight to shake the rust out from 2 years out of the sport following his retirement in 2015.

There’s still no word who will televising the Mayweather-McGregor fight and how much the PPV will cost the consumers. The last time Mayweather fought a big star in Manny Pacquiao in May 2015, the price for the event went for $100 minimum on PPV. There were a lot of unhappy boxing fans about having to pay more for a fight that turned out to be totally lacking in excitement and effort from the two fighters.

McGregor, 28, is viewed as the biggest star in the UFC. However, he’s never fought before in a boxing ring, so this will be the first time that he’ll put on a pair of boxing gloves for a professional fight. If the Mayweather-McGregor fight does take place in Las Vegas, the Nevada State Athletic Commission will need to give permission for the fight to take place.

What’s troubling about the fight is that it’ll be a novice fighting the best fighter in boxing in Mayweather. It’s not normal for the best fighters in the sport to face fighters that have never fought before. You see that kind of thing with guys that are just staring their pro career and are padding their records off of fighters with no experience. But for Mayweather to be facing a guy without a pro fight in McGregor, it’s somewhat unfair. It won’t be exhibition fight. It’ll count as a real fight. If Mayweather wins, he’ll pick up his 50th victory of his boxing career.

Mayweather wants the McGregor fight because he sees it as attracting a lot of interest from both the MMA and boxing world. Mayweather is right. The fight will attract interest from fans curious to see how two fighters from different sports are able to compete. It’s seen as a forgone conclusion that Mayweather will win.

The real question is will the fans be pleased if Mayweather easily destroys McGregor in a hopelessly one-sided fight or will they be angry and feel ripped off like many fans did at paying the high prices for the Mayweather-Pacquiao fight. The fans that learned from that spectacle might not be interested in being ripped off again by Mayweather with his circus fight against McGregor. But there are a whole new batch of fans that didn’t see Mayweather-Pacquiao, so they will be willing to purchase the fight.

Hopefully, Mayweather adds some great undercard fights to entertain the fans so at least they’ll something interesting to see. The Mayweather-Pacquiao undercard was truly awful in this writer’s opinion. There were no interesting fights at all, and it just seemed like the undercard was thrown together without care due to the belief that fans would purchase the card anyway.

The fight generated 4.3 million PPV buys and shattered records. It showed that undercards don’t matter if you have a main event that boxing fans care enough about to ignore the lack of a quality undercard.