There’s been a lot of will he / won’t he going on surrounding a Floyd Mayweather vs. Conor McGregor rematch in the UFC, something Floyd seems to be hyping up with trollish enjoyment. But what’s the actual truth behind all this? UFC president Dana White stoked the flames when he told Joe Rogan that Mayweather had engaged in serious discussions with the UFC about a fight. Mayweather cooled that news down, telling the press “Just because I said I could, doesn’t mean I would.”
But according to journalist Gareth Davies, the UFC’s preferred UK reporter for handing out insider information, negotiations for Floyd vs. Conor in the cage are continuing behind the scenes.
“My soundings are that there are a lot of talks going on in the background,” he told Talksport’s Jim White. “There are a lot of talks around people with Mayweather. There are a lot of talks about him potentially having an MMA fight with Conor McGregor.”
“Conor McGregor had no chance in a boxing match with Floyd Mayweather. People will tune in to see Mayweather get stopped by Conor McGregor, and it won’t affect his boxing record. I think it’s going to happen, and I think it will be a three, four, five hundred million dollar fight again.”
While a lot of people initially scoffed at the possibility of Conor McGregor crossing over into boxing to fight Mayweather, it soon became apparent that McGregor was hellbent on making the fight happen. His determination and the money he stood to gain – his first hundred million dollar payday after sitting around ten to twenty million per fight – made it an obvious goal to pursue. Mayweather was also a great opponent: he’d draw a big buyrate but hadn’t knocked anyone out in years.
Come at the king, you best not miss… pic.twitter.com/uHx4SJngHx
— Floyd Mayweather (@FloydMayweather) February 1, 2018
But this time we have Mayweather, who’s already sitting on a big pile of money, considering a fight that would undoubtedly end with him getting embarrassed in the Octagon. There would be no ‘impressive showing’ talk like McGregor received, no debate about whether someone was carried through the fight or not. The only question is whether McGregor would hurt Mayweather badly or not before the referee stepped in to stop things. The money Mayweather already has and the whuppings he’d likely receive change the equation a lot, making it all the more likely that at any point in these supposed negotiations, Floyd could (and probably should) smarten up and walk away from the idea.
But Mayweather loves money, and after every fight he posts a picture of his paycheck on social media, saying he always gets ‘the last laugh.’ A quick loss in the Octagon for another quarter billion dollars may be the ultimate last laugh, a ludicrously profitable business decision and the final proof that he doesn’t care what you think of him or how you try to define his legacy.
