Last week boxing superstar Floyd Mayweather claimed that the UFC were trying to lure him back out of retirement, and Dana White has now confirmed that it’s true.
“[UFC] just called me not too long ago and asked me to come back,” Mayweather stated last week. “I can come right back. If I wanted to I could come right back to the UFC. I can go fight in the Octagon. I can go do a three or four-fight deal in the Octagon and make a billion dollars. Remember I’m Floyd ‘Money’ Mayweather.”
Yesterday, UFC color commentator Joe Rogan backed up Mayweather’s claims on his ‘MMA Show’ podcast, saying that he’d heard directly from the UFC president himself that they were in talks with Mayweather, and White himself has since spoken out to validate the rumors.
“We’re talking to Floyd about doing a UFC deal,” White told ESPN. “It’s real. He was talking about [boxing] Conor McGregor. Was that real? Have you heard Floyd talk about many things that aren’t real? He usually tips his hand when he’s in the media and then that s— ends up happening.
“We’re interested in doing something with Floyd. Everything is a realistic possibility. Mayweather versus McGregor f—— happened. Anything is possible.”
In all honesty it still seems like a pie-in-the-sky scenario that Mayweather would agree to an MMA fight in the UFC as he has a perfect, unblemished record in boxing, while competing in the Octagon would almost certainly hand him a humiliating defeat.
It’s worth noting that White also confirmed recently that the UFC’s parent company Zuffa, owned by Endeavour (formerly WME-IMG) were looking to expand into boxing in 2018, and so it could be that the discussions taking place between the two parties have more to do with that than anything else.
Still, for the UFC an MMA fight between McGregor and Mayweather would be a dream come true, and even if it doesn’t, making it seem as if it’s a possibility will generate a lot of publicity in the mean time.
