Media sports sections are alive with rumours of a fight between the retired boxing megastar Floyd Mayweather and the UFC champion Conor McGregor.
Some are adamant it will never happen – The Toronto Star's sports writer Morgan Campbell, for instance. Others are more positive, such as the veteran boxing promoter Freddie Roach, who said on the MMA digital TV channel on Monday: "It looks like it's gonna happen. Everything is pointing in the right direction. I think Conor will have his hands full with a boxer like Floyd. But he's sellable, he's making some noise."
It seems everyone in sport has an opinion on what would be the most intriguing matchup since Muhammad Ali faced the Japanese professional wrestler Antonio Inoki in 1976.
In boxing money does not just talk, it screams. Promoters, fighters and everyone else involved in the business compete ruthlessly for their own piece of the financial pie and this is one of the reasons that negotiations can be so acrimonious, protracted and problematic.
A bout between Mayweather and McGregor would be more complicated to put together than the former’s fight with Manny Pacquiao, which was itself several years in the making. However, the sheer amount of money involved could well be enough to tempt all the relevant parties to the negotiating table.
The single biggest obstacle is McGregor’s exclusive contract with the UFC, a company that promotes mixed martial arts (MMA) fights, not boxing matches. The timing of the Mayweather talk is interesting because UFC’s holding company was recently acquired for US$4 billion by WME-IMG. That raised eyebrows in financial circles and the new owners are under immense pressure to raise revenue sufficiently to justify this valuation.
The UFC top brass might be concerned that a humiliating loss to Mayweather in the boxing ring would damage McGregor’s marketability for future MMA fights. However, Stephen Dawson, who has worked as a pundit for Fox Sports and ESPN Star Sports for over a decade, does not believe this should be an insurmountable issue.
“Boxing is a different sport and Mayweather is one of its greatest ever exponents. It’s like saying Serena’s tennis legacy or that of the WTA would be tarnished if she lost to Nicol David at squash, which of course she would,” he says.
Dana White, the UFC president, might have sold his stake in the UFC but he remains the organisation’s official mouthpiece. Last month he publicly offered Mayweather $25 million to face McGregor, knowing full well that would not be enough money to tempt the multiple world champion out of retirement.
However, he appears to have since toughened his stance and recently told Sports Illustrated in that the UFC would not allow the fight to go ahead. "It will never happen, that's not even possible. He's under contract with us. You have a contract for a reason."
In the same interview Mr White stated that McGregor, who fought three times last year, has four fights left on his current contract. That suggests that the Mayweather matchup could happen further down the line, assuming the Irishman can compete four more times without losing any of his existing marketability or allure.
McGregor has suggested the Ali Act, a piece of boxing-related legislation that prevents a promoter from acting as a manager, might make his UFC contract unenforceable. He is clearly intent on facing Mayweather under Queensbury Rules and recently told fans: “I believe the next time I step into a combat arena it’ll be through the ropes.”
McGregor has threatened to test the legality of his UFC agreement in court but entering into lengthy judicial proceedings would potentially keep him out of action for several years during his athletic prime.
He is far too astute an operator to make such a mistake. This means he would need to either find a way of working with the UFC or wait until he has completed his current contract. McGregor clearly favours the former option. “I think it’s smoother if we’re all involved. I think we’re all about good business. I’ve done great business with the UFC, with Dana, with everyone. I think it’s smoother if everyone just gets together and [is] involved.”
McGregor is the current UFC lightweight champion and without doubt the most popular mixed martial artist in the history of the sport. Boxing has been around a lot longer so it is more difficult to measure Mayweather against his illustrious predecessors but one thing is for sure, none of them earned as much as the man whose nickname is “money”.
It would be easy to dismiss the gossip as idle. After all, MMA and boxing are two very different disciplines and there is no way Mayweather is ever going to compete under anything other than the Queensbury rules. There is also the small matter of McGregor’s exclusive contract with the UFC, but the rumours will not go away because both fighters keep fuelling them.
In a recent televised interview McGregor, one of only three men to ever win UFC titles at two different weights, was adamant that the fight with Mayweather was a serious possibility.
“That fight is being more than explored. That fight has been in the works for a while now. It’s a fight the people want. It’s the fight I want,” he said.
A few hours later Mayweather was interviewed at a boxing event and admitted he would be interested in boxing McGregor.
“I believe the fight could happen. He’s a tough competitor and has proved throughout the years in the UFC that he can fight standing up. So we’ll just have to see what the future holds, hopefully we can make the fight happen,” he said.
Mr Dawson knows a bit about both sports, having written a book about Ali and being a long-term commentator for Asia’s biggest MMA promotion, ONE Championship. He believes the UFC would be willing to get into the boxing business just to make this fight. “Yes. It’s not even up for discussion. They just have to get the money right.
“It’s different and that is exciting enough. Sport should do much more of this [like] when Billie Jean King played a man at tennis and when Muhammad Ali fought a wrestler. It’s fun, let it happen,” he says.
However, Jon Nutt, who runs Thailand’s biggest MMA organisation, Full Metal Dojo, and is also a UFC analyst for Fox Sports, sees some risks in any matchup. “As an MMA promoter I would be willing to team up and let it happen but that’s my business model not the UFC’s. They want to be the NFL or the NBA of fighting and they might feel that if they team up to do a boxing match it damages their brand.”
Mayweather is officially retired from boxing but his current record stands at 49-0 and the 39-year-old could surely be tempted back by the possibility of a huge payday that could take him to the magical 50 mark. He would also be entitled to see a fight against McGregor, who has never even competed in boxing, as an easy night’s work.
Just how much money the fight would generate is the subject of some conjecture. There is no question that McGregor would receive a career-high purse, which goes a long way towards explaining his newfound enthusiasm for boxing. Whether or not it would be as successful as the $500m generated by the 2015 Pacquiao vs Mayweather fight is debatable.
Mark Taffet launched HBOPPV in 1991 and has overseen 190 pay-per-view events, generating 65 million buys and $3.6bn in revenue. He is in no doubt a match between Mayweather and McGregor would be a box office success.
“It would do a tremendous amount of business because of the fan bases of both sports and both athletes, clearly a seven-figure PPV event, but I don’t think it reaches the never before seen levels of Mayweather vs Pacquiao,” he says.
Unsurprisingly, McGregor disagrees and feels a meeting between him and Mayweather would break all existing PPV records.
“If Manny and Floyd did half a billion, this is a billion dollar fight,” he says.
This is one sporting debate that is only going to rumble on.
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