By Allan Fox: Floyd Mayweather Jr. has a lot of fans believing that he’s going to be making a comeback soon to face Conor McGregor in the octagon in a fight in the UFC. In the past week alone, Mayweather has twice posted videos of himself pacing back and forth in the octagon while dressed in the manner that a typical UFC fighter would be for competition.
Promoter Eddie Hearn thinks it’s a joke by Mayweather, because he feels he’s too smart to take a risk with his health by going into the octagon to face one of the UFC stars. Hearn thinks Mayweather will get absolutely crushed if he competes with one of the fighters in the UFC. Never the less, the 40-year-old Mayweather’s constant taunting of McGregor on social media suggests that he’s seriously kicking around the idea of making a comeback.
“If Floyd Mayweather goes into the UFC ring, you may never see him again,” Eddie Hearn said to Fighthype. “He would get absolutely crushed. He’s one of the greatest fighters of all time, but I’m guessing he’s playing. He’s too smart for that. He’s a very smart guy. He’s too smart to go into the octagon,” Hearn said.
If Mayweather fights in the UFC against McGregor, it would be all about him getting a big payday to help feather his retirement a little more than he’s already cushioned it with his other big paydays. It would a golden parachute for Mayweather. At the same time, I think Mayweather would like to upstage the May 5th rematch between Saul Canelo Alvarez and Gennady ‘GGG’ Golovkin by scheduling a rematch with McGregor right in front of it, so that the boxing fans must choose between his event fight against McGregor or the Canelo-Golovkin rematch.
Enough fans would likely purchase the Mayweather vs. McGregor 2 fight to hurt the PPV numbers for the Canelo-Golovkin 2 rematch. That fight would still do great numbers on HBO pay-per-view, but you’d have to believe that it would lose a lot of potential buys from boxing fans that have already spent their money on the Mayweather-McGregor 2 rematch.
“Look at the UFC. They’re struggling,” Hearn said. “They’re talking about $400 million for a broadcast deal. They can’t get anywhere near it. They’ve got Conor McGregor, who’s got their balls in a safe right now. Tell me the stars of the UFC. Conor McGregor. Tell me another one. Ronda Rousey. She’s just gone to WW, I don’t know. So, I’d love to see what goes on behind closed doors between Conor McGregor and Dana White and the UFC. But right now the UFC is still a huge business. But it doesn’t have the pull with the broadcasters that it did 2 years ago when McGregor was their flagship, because in every sport you need a flagship. You need the superstar. You need the flag bearer, and there isn’t one now in the UFC. They’re playing catch-up to try and develop the new stars,” Hearn said.
The problem the UFC has is the incredibly short shelf life for their stars. It takes a long time to create a star in the UFC, and once they get a star, they don’t stay on top for long because of the brutal nature of the sport. It’s impossible for a fighter to remain a big name for long in the UFC, so that definitely hurts the sport. Rousey and McGregor were their biggest names, but now that they’ve made a lot of money, they’ve stopped competing. McGregor is supposed to return to the UFC at some point, but it’s been close to 2 years since he last competed. If Mayweather is McGregor’s next fight in the UFC, I would expect it to be his last fight before he retires from the sport.
