A boxing fight between Conor McGregor and Floyd Mayweather is so close to being official that we can taste it. We’ve known for a while that both Conor and Floyd want it to happen … and why not with upwards of a billion dollars to be made if it does? And last week the UFC seemed to get out of the way, with UFC president Dana White saying the bout was going to happen and he’d ‘never stop Conor from making that kind of money.’
Now we’ve got Chael Sonnen with an extra juicy tidbit that seems to indicate the fight is close enough to happening that the behind the scenes actions required for an event this size have already started to occur.
“For some reason, both of these fighters have said they’re fighting, but no reporter has announced it. Now I have information from someone higher than that, which is a guy at a ticketing company where the build was sent in,” Chael said on the latest episode of his podcast. “To tell you what that means, it’s called a ‘build.’ In that industry, that’s when you submit to the ticketing company, what you want, what your card is, what your date is — essentially, your schematics, this is what the arena layout is going to look like. That’s called the build, that’s the first step to lining up your tickets.”
“The build was submitted, and I got it right from the ticketing guy. Whether that information is accurate or not, I believe it is. I believe it is enough that I reported it, I tweeted it. I will tell you again, I don’t know how to use any clearer language, Conor and Floyd are going to fight.”
It seems kinda crazy believing anything Chael Sonnen says, but while he’s a notorious liar when it comes to promoting his fights, he takes his reputation as a source for fight information pretty seriously. And regardless of whether this ‘build’ tip is true or not, he’s not wrong on a key point: barring some catastrophic negotiation meltdown, Conor and Floyd are going to fight. We’re way past this being pie in the sky now, folks.
