Conor McGregor’s Saturday night went pretty well. He finally got to face off against long-time rival Jose Aldo for the UFC featherweight title. He beat Aldo, the greatest featherweight fighter of all time, with a pinpoint-accurate counter punch to the jaw in 13 seconds flat. And he got paid a lot of money for his efforts. The 13 seconds earned him the record for fastest finish in a UFC title fight, previously held by Ronda Rousey for her 16-second submission of Cat Zingano.
That’s not the only record McGregor just took from Rousey. Forbes is estimating that UFC 194 performed well enough on pay-per-view to knock Ronda out of the top spot as highest paid fighter per second. If that sounds kinda made up, it’s because it is: Ronda Rousey used the metric as a way to claim she was paid better than Floyd Mayweather. She calculated how much she made per second in her 34-second fight against Bethe Correia versus how much Floyd made in his 12 round decision over Manny Pacquiao. Floyd made $83,333 per second while Rousey made $147,000.
McGregor’s 13-second fight blows both of those figures out of the water. Via Forbes:
Like Rousey, McGregor’s contract gives him a cut of pay-per-view shares: a reported $3-$5 for each purchase. While we don’t know exactly how many buys UFC 194 will total — most outlets predict well over one million — it is a sure bet to at least reach UFC 189′s one-million mark. McGregor fought Chad Mendes, a last-minute replacement for Aldo, in the headliner for that event.
Going off the lowest figures in that equation, one million PPV buys with a $3 cut, McGregor would already be getting paid more than $230,000 per second. Add in his $580,000 combined fight and sponsor pay, and that number rises to more than $275,000 per second ($3.5 million total). In case you’re curious, a more optimistic estimate for McGregor — say, a $5 PPV cut and 1.5 million PPV buys — would equate to nearly $622,000 per second ($8 million total).
Sure, highest paid fighter per second is basically a novelty record created by one fighter to diss another. But it’s still a fun way to break down how much some of the top fighters in the game are making. With his win on Saturday night, Conor McGregor is going to hold onto that stat for a long time. Unless Floyd Mayweather rematches Manny Pacquiao and someone gets knocked out in the first three rounds, it could stand forever.
(Via Forbes)
