By Sean Jones: Conor McGregor says he’s interested in returning to the ring for a boxing match against superstar Canelo Alvarez.
The 34-year-old McGregor, whose MMA career appears to be done, says he knows Canelo (59-2-2, 39 KOs) is on the decline and has no problems fighting him. Fans would have a field day trashing Canelo if he chose to fight McGregor instead of facing David Benavidez or Dmitry Bivol.
It would confirm to those on the fence who are still undecided whether Canelo is a cherry-picker. His last fight against John Ryder should have made it clear, but for those slow on the uptake, they’d finally get it if Canelo chose to cherry-pick a fight against McGregor instead of the killers waiting on murderer’s row to massacre him.
It will be a predictable move if Canelo takes the soft path by steering his sinking ship away from the predators towards safer waters to take a fight against McGregor.
If Canelo stages a battle between himself and McGregor at the massive 100,000-seat Aztec Stadium in Mexico City, they can probably fill it and make good money on ticket sales. It would be fun to see McGregor trash-talking Canelo unmercifully during the press conferences.
Would Canelo control himself and resist belting McGregor as he did Caleb Plant during their kick-off press conference in 2021?
McGregor fought Floyd Mayweather Jr in a boxing match in August 2017 and was knocked out in the tenth round. The former two-division UFC champion McGregor made $130 million for that fight.
If McGregor thinks a fight between him and Canelo can make anywhere near that kind of money, he’s sadly mistaken.
McGregor’s popularity in his sport has arguably declined because his career evaporated after his big payday against Mayweather. The Irish native McGregor hasn’t fought in a boxing match since that fight, and fans won’t be eager to pay $100 or even $60 per household on PPV to watch Canelo him.
Mayweather-McGregor sold for $100 on pay-per-view, and naive fans purchased the fight in huge numbers, resulting in the event bringing in a record 4.3 million buys. That’s a record that still stands today. The only way Canelo would be interested in fighting Conor McGregor in a boxing match is if he believes their fight would bring in those kinds of buy numbers.
Even if Canelo-McGregor brought in half of those totals at 2 million buys, it would be a huge amount of dough for the Mexican star and much more than he’s made in any of his fights during his 19-year professional career. It doesn’t seem realistic that many saps would be willing to purchase a mismatch between Canelo and McGregor.
“I’m a southpaw, John Ryder’s a southpaw, Billy Joe Saunders is a southpaw. I’ve seen methods, I’ve seen things I do, and I know he’s waning. I’d fight Canelo no f***ing problem,” said Conor McGregor to The MAC Life about his interest in returning to the boxing ring to take on Canelo Alvarez.
If McGregor first proved himself inside the boxing ring by beating some top fighters at 168 or 160, a fight between him and Canelo would go over well. These would be excellent options for McGregor to fight to prove he deserves a Canelo payday:
David Benavidez
Janibek Alimkhanuly
David Morrell Jr
Caleb Plant
Dmitry Bivol
Artur Beterbiev
Gennadiy Golovkin
Demetrius Andrade
Jermall Charlo
Jermell Charlo
Tim Tszyu
McGregor could take his pick of fighting any of those guys, but this writer doesn’t see him beating any of them.
In fact, McGregor would likely get knocked out in the first round by all of them unless they chose to carry him, which is what many boxing and believed Mayweather did.
