Negotiations for the Conor McGregor vs. Floyd Mayweather boxing superfight are getting seriously underway. On one side, we have Conor and the UFC, represented by president Dana White. On the other, we have Floyd, his manager Al Haymon, and their PPV partner Showtime.
Leading up to this moment, there was a lot of back and forth in the media about who would be the A side, or the side that got the majority of the purse money from the fight. For his infamous fight against Manny Pacquiao, for example, Floyd Mayweather managed to secure a 60/40 split in his favor.
But if Dana White gets his way, we’ll be seeing a 50-50 split right down the middle.
“We haven’t even talked percentages yet,” White told reporters on Wednesday (via MMA Fighting). “Floyd can think whatever, but the machine that the UFC has and Conor McGregor alone is a machine by himself. I think that 50-50 is pretty fair.”
That machine, according to Dana White, is really going to put this event over the top internationally. The UFC spent the past five years growing their business in dozens of countries and they expect to see that reflected in the final numbers.
“I think this thing does, conservatively, between 2-1/2 and 4 million buys,” White said. “Other people think more. And this thing will kill it, globally. Conor McGregor and the UFC are huge in Brazil, huge in Australia, massive in the UK and other parts of Europe.”
White seems confident that a deal can be struck without a lot of the acrimonious trash talking that was going on earlier, when White didn’t really believe the fight was a possibility and he was more than willing to diss Floyd publicly. And while other comments seemed to imply White was willing to give Mayweather a bigger piece of the overall pie, he’s now getting ready to walk into negotiations starting at an even 50-50. It will be interesting to see how that works out for him.
