Major Obstacles to a Mayweather vs. McGregor Super Fight

On a weekend in which a new bantamweight title contender was determined on Fox, Jorge Masvidal scored the best win of his career against Donald Cerrone, and Bellator promoted a forgettable event shrouded in the afterglow of the previous week’s tent-pole event, naturally the talk of the sport was Conor McGregor.

Saturday evening in Manchester, McGregor sat down for an interview with MMA Fighting’s Ariel Helwani that was graciously broadcast on pay-per-view. Based on reports, most of the interview played as a rehash of McGregor’s favorite lines on the same subjects he’s spoken about for months, most notably a potential boxing match with Floyd Mayweather.

“I have my eyes on one thing right now, and that’s Floyd Mayweather,” McGregor said according to a Bleacher Report summary. “That fight is more than just being explored. There’s a lot of steps, but it’s the fight to make. It’s the fight I want. I believe this is the first billion fight, so people have to pay for a billion dollar fight. I believe it will happen at the end of this year or at the beginning of next year.”

The fight that was once pure fantasy is by every account being seriously considered by both the McGregor and Mayweather sides. The major obstacle in making the fight is that it involves a third side – the UFC, who McGregor is contracted to. Of the three parties, the UFC, which may have the power to make or break the match, has the most to lose.

Floyd Mayweather is in the best position of the three. Mayweather, 39, last fought in September 2015 and has no financial need to fight again, much less a need to fight a legitimate challenger. McGregor is the only opponent he’s interested in because there is almost no risk to Mayweather’s pristine zero-loss record in the boxing ring and it would promise a nine-figure payday.

Although he’ll likely be able to convince many otherwise, McGregor would be no more than a sheep for slaughter in the boxing ring against Mayweather. McGregor may be larger, more powerful, and more active, but even Mayweather losing a couple of steps in his year-plus absence would not change the fact that one is a world class boxer – an all-time great – and the other is not. A happy middle ground – a kickboxing match, or even gimmicky rules that called for alternating between boxing and kickboxing each round – would make for a much more interesting fight, but Mayweather holds the power. He has no reason to entertain the idea of a more dangerous (for him) rule set when the allure of the payday of a lifetime is enough to draw McGregor into a boxing match.

McGregor will score a bigger payday than he could realistically hope to in a single mixed martial arts bout. That’s why it makes sense for him – because once the check clears, he’ll move toward a Mayweather position. If the numbers don’t make sense, he’s already caught his golden goose; he’d never fight again for the need of it.

That is only one of the reasons that should make the third party in the deal weary. Making the fight with the UFC involved will require the UFC to relent to Mayweather’s financial demands – Dana White’s offer of $25 million plus a to-be-negotiated pay-per-view cut is far from Mayweather’s demand of $100 million plus a pay-per-view backend. McGregor will also be expensive – likely no less than White’s public offer, which is multiple times more than UFC has ever paid a fighter for any single fight. As Bleacher Report’s Jonathan Snowden keenly observed, the fight upends UFC’s promotional model that they have always aggressively defended, puts their biggest star at risk of an embarrassing loss on the largest stage imaginable, and if they aren’t amiable to it, McGregor may attempt to challenge his contact to do it without them, opening up a larger can of worms. It’s a fragile situation for a company that will need its biggest star to help hit its major earnings goals and repay the steep loans that financed its sale last summer.

There is too much money involved for either Mayweather or McGregor to turn the fight down, but it’s not a given that the same can be said for the UFC. With both main event fighters receiving a significant guaranteed payday plus a percentage of the pay-per-view, how much is left for the UFC? It wouldn’t be nothing, nor an amount to scoff at, but it would have to at least be as much as they’d get for promoting a McGregor lightweight title defense, which would likely exceed one million buys no matter the opponent. The immediate return of the fight is only one point to consider.

If McGregor were to lose badly to Mayweather and the public deems it a farce, it could damage him as an attraction. Mayweather’s bout with Manny Pacquiao attracted more than 4.6 million pay-per-view buys, easily an all-time record, but the fight was widely derided as boring and did not live up to the hype. Mayweather’s next fight drew only a tenth as well, doing an estimated 400,000 buys according to Yahoo. Pacquiao’s next fight after Mayweather pulled similar numbers. McGregor is a better talker than Mayweather or Pacquiao, and he’d have the excuse that he competed outside of his sport, so a bad loss to Mayweather should not quite hurt him in a similar manner – should he fight afterward – but it must be considered a possibility.

There are strong reasons for the UFC to push away from a Mayweather vs. McGregor boxing match, but McGregor could try to make the fight without the promotion’s involvement. “With the Ali Act, I believe I can [fight Mayweather without the UFC’s permission],” McGregor said in Manchester. “Especially now that there’s offers on the table. But,” he added, “I think it’s smoother if we’re all involved.”

McGregor is aiming to get the deal done with all parties involved to avoid the headache of a legal battle with the UFC that would surely occur if he attempted to fight Mayweather without their permission. He refers to a provision in the Ali Act that protects boxers from coercive contracts, which he may argue his UFC contract violates in the event that the UFC would challenge him in this scenario. Should it come to the courts, McGregor would likely launch a larger challenge against UFC contracts, which many have criticized but have avoided a major legal challenge (past challenges resulted in eventual out of court settlements).

If not competitive, a Mayweather vs. McGregor boxing match would certainly be historic, not only for coming together but also how it came together. It would either mean unprecedented and unforeseen concessions on one or more of the three sides, or a UFC fighter breaking rank for the biggest payday of his life. The fight itself may not be interesting from a sporting perspective, but the forces involved in making it come together are worth examining and could have a far-reaching impact.

Dan Plunkett has covered MMA for 411Mania since 2008. You can reach him by email at [email protected] and follow him on Twitter @Dan_Plunkett.