Boxing superstar Floyd Mayweather is continuing to bang the drum regarding a boxing match with Conor McGregor, and he believes he has a masterplan to turn the superfight into a reality.
“If I do fight, it’s only against Conor McGregor,” Mayweather told ESNews. “That’s gonna be my only fight and not against nobody else because this matchup is just so intriguing. You have a fighter against an MMA fighter, one of the best MMA fighters to do combat and stand up and do it. He’s a strong fighter and when I look at him fight he’s a little faster than I thought he was so if the fight happens I can’t overlook the guy. I’m pretty sure – if we make the fight happen – I’m pretty sure he’s gonna push me to the limit.”
Most people laughed off the idea of Mayweather fighting McGregor when the story first emerged in the UK tabloids, and even UFC president Dana White has shot down the idea, saying, “there’s no way in hell,” that it will happen, but the boxer still believes he can find a way to make it work.
“I’m pretty sure we’re gonna have a master plan to make that fight happen,” Mayweather said. “It hasn’t happened yet, but we locked down some dates. Me and my team, me and Al Haymon, me and Leonard Ellerbe we locked down some dates in different countries, in different cities in the United States.”
If he could do the impossible, Mayweather reckons that his eventual fight between the two would break the 4.6 million PPV record that he set when he fought Manny Pacquiao last year.
“With my numbers for the Pacquiao fight I know we was at 4.6, I know we’re somewhere around 5 million now. 5 million homes. Pay per view. And even if we’re not at 5 million it sounds good. I know we’re over 4.6 so we gonna say 5 million. We probably can break that number. It’s possible. Anything is possible.”
Really, this is a win-win situation for Mayweather. If nothing comes of it, he gets some good publicity from this and will be able to claim that McGregor and the UFC are running scared from him.
At the same time, if by some minor miracle he did put it together and it is under boxing rules, then he’d get another huge payday for a relatively easy fight, would improve his record to a perfect 50-0, and would be able to claim, rightly or wrongly, that he’d also conquered the MMA game.
Of course if Mayweather was to fight McGregor in the Octagon under MMA rules then it would be a completely different story, but there’s absolutely no chance that he’d agree to that.
The idea still seems pie in the sky though, as the UFC has McGregor under contract, which means he can’t fight without their permission. Mayweather’s used to running the show, but so are the UFC, and of course ‘The Notorious’ also has his own agenda, so eveen if they could get round a table to negotiate the match-up, the chances of them all seeing eye-to-eye are beyond slim.
“Listen, if you look at Floyd Mayweather and Manny Pacquaio, (they) were in the same sport and they couldn’t make that fight,” Dana White said recently. “You think you’re going to make Floyd and Conor?”
