Even as he eases into an extended period of planned time off from the Octagon, Conor McGregor is pioneering new and interesting ways to keep himself in the spotlight.
Take last week’s streaming pay-per-view interview, for example, when McGregor spent roughly an hour fielding questions from veteran MMA reporter Ariel Helwani in Manchester, England.
McGregor began the event by climbing onto the stage from a Rolls Royce luxury car wearing a maroon tuxedo and bathing in the cheers and chants from an audience he claimed numbered as many as 5,000. Once the Q&A officially began, the bombastic Irishman proved all over again why he remains the most influential speaker in combat sports.
Over the course of the wide-ranging interview, McGregor effortlessly seized control of the MMA news cycle and once again shook up boxing, too, with his continued insistence he’ll next fight Floyd Mayweather Jr.—with or without the help of the UFC.
"I have my eyes on one thing, and that’s Floyd Mayweather…," McGregor said. "Me and Floyd have got to get together and talk and figure it out the same way him and Manny [Pacquiao] figured it out. ... I’ll go to Vegas. I’ll handle the commission, or we’ll figure that situation out and then we’ll come to a dotted line and then we’ll go, but this is happening."
Naturally, such talk required a response from UFC President Dana White, whose company still holds McGregor under exclusive contract. White scoffed at the notion McGegor and Mayweather could promote a bout independently and promised meaningful consequences if his lightweight champion tries to break with the UFC.
"You know how I feel about Conor," White said, during the UFC on Fox 23 post-fight press conference, via Fox Sports' Damon Martin. "I've always shown Conor nothing but respect, and if he wants to go down that road with us, let me tell you, it will be an epic fall."
So the stage is set for yet another confrontation between the fight company and its biggest star. How will all this shake out? Joining me to discuss the ongoing cold war between McGregor and the UFC is Bleacher Report’s Mike Chiappetta.
Chad Dundas: Mike, for a while now McGregor and his bosses have been tiptoeing toward a potential contractual showdown. When McGregor obtained a boxing license in California in December 2016, it was widely speculated the move was an end-around to try to get out of his UFC deal.
The Cliffs Notes version is that by getting that license, McGregor might fall under the auspices of the federal Muhammad Ali Boxing Reform Act, which currently covers the sweet science but not MMA. The Ali Act offers boxers added protections from "coercive provisions" in promotional contracts, and the law could put some of the more draconian language of the UFC’s standard fighter contract to a legal test, according to Bloody Elbow’s John S. Nash.
McGregor appeared to confirm that strategy in his interview with Helwani. While asserting he’d rather move forward with the UFC’s blessing, he thinks the Ali Act may give him the legal protection he needs to green-light an independently promoted bout against Mayweather.
"With the Ali Act, I believe I can, especially now that there’s offers on the table," McGregor said, "but 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 [White], with everyone. … But again, everyone’s got to know their place. We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it."
The degree to which the Ali Act may apply to McGregor and the extent to which it might undo his existing UFC contract are obviously both highly theoretical at this point.
So let’s speculate: Mike, how do you see this current quagmire playing out? Does McGregor really have the power and the patience to go toe-to-toe with the UFC in court? Or is it the fight company that actually holds the cards here?
Mike Chiappetta: I admire McGregor’s bravado and bluster, and I believe that he believes this is going to happen. And given all he’s accomplished, why would he doubt it? He went from welfare recipient to multimillionaire in a couple of years. With that track record, anything must truly seem possible.
And sure, there is a possibility of McGregor-Mayweather happening. I just don’t think it’s a very good one.
To me, there are two things that are doomed to sink the fight: the UFC and time.
The Ali Act may well offer a glimpse of hope, but any invocation of it by McGregor will result in swift legal action. Given Mayweather’s advanced age—he turns 40 years old later this month—the slow hand of the law will almost certainly prevent the fight from occurring. It’s possible McGregor would want to wait a couple of years to make the bout, but Mayweather? He doesn’t have that kind of time even if he were willing to wait it out.
The UFC would make the fight, if only it could have the same revenue share as it does on its pay-per-view, but with Mayweather and McGregor in the equation, that is a near-impossibility. These are two men who are nearly peerless in combat sports history for understanding their worth and milking every last dollar from their earnings opportunities.
In the UFC model, the company gets the lion’s share of the revenue. In the boxing model, the stars get the lion’s share of the revenue. For the UFC, that’s a huge problem.
Let’s assume that this fight approaches the nearly $600 million in revenue that Mayweather vs. Pacquiao did, based off around 4 million pay-per-view buys priced at $100 apiece and a monster gate.
That’s a windfall of cash, but think about how many entities feed off that. The pay-per-view company and cable distributors get about 45 percent of every buy. (Slice off around $180 million there.) There is a marketing budget to pay. (Lop off another $20 million.) There are production costs to pay. (Another several million.) Uncle Sam takes his cut. (Millions more.)
Mayweather will be looking to near or equal the $220 million he made for his role in MayPac, and McGregor has already scoffed at any notion that Mayweather is the "A-side" of the promotion, so he wants a massive payday, too. So where does that leave a UFC-sized cut for that organization? It doesn’t. At least not enough for it to risk damaging McGregor as a core brand of its business.
If Mayweather were younger, they would have a chance to wait out an agreement or a legal decision. But he's not. He's old. And with the present circumstance, unless the UFC feels sheer desperation, it doesn’t have the incentive to make it happen.
Chad, do you see any other reason it will? Any other chance it might happen?
Chad: I think it’s still an extreme long shot, though the way this story has refused to die (in no small part due to McGregor himself), I can no longer dismiss it completely.
McGregor may very well possess the singular mix of popularity, business sense and hard-headedness to take his fight to court, especially if he thinks there’s a mammoth payday waiting for him on the other side. But unless McGregor were to quickly win a home run judgment against the UFC from a judge, it’s hard to imagine a scenario where this ends with an actual boxing match against Mayweather.
And that includes any scenario under the UFC banner.
Aside from the monetary implications you point out, suffering the perils of arranging this bout might not be such a good promotional strategy for the UFC in the first place.
Even if the profits would be juicy, the organization would be putting McGregor’s future as a drawing card at risk. With Ronda Rousey likely gone for good, would White & Co. really want to send their last remaining mainstream star out to get embarrassed by the greatest boxer of the current generation?
Maybe getting whipped by Mayweather in a boxing match wouldn’t hurt McGregor’s reputation as an MMA fighter. But maybe it would. That’s an awfully big risk for a one-off freak-show bout, even a very lucrative one.
That said, we know WME-IMG will be under a lot of pressure to justify the $4.2 billion it paid to acquire the UFC last July. The new owners are immediately tasked with cutting overhead while greatly increasing profits. So far, 2017 shapes up as a significant down year—especially compared to the boom times of 2016.
Is it possible the honchos in L.A. would so desperate they green-light McGregor vs. Mayweather just as a short-term cash grab?
I suppose it’s possible, though I still can’t force myself to believe it.
In a bigger-picture sense, I wonder if a fight against Mayweather might not actually be McGregor's whole point here. The man's ambitions quite frankly seem bigger than what the UFC will allow. To me, that signals more trouble brewing in the future. Even if this particular quagmire comes to a peaceful resolution, I believe it would only be a matter of time before McGregor started thinking big again.
Mike, do you think the UFC will eventually be able to cow him back into long-term servitude? Or are fighter and promoter destined to always be at each other’s throats?
Mike: This is really the underlying question here. Mayweather-McGregor is the current representation of an issue that will exist long into the future. And that is, how does McGregor squeeze every dollar of his worth out of a promotion that is notoriously tight with the purse strings?
As previously mentioned, he has a strong understanding and belief in his worth, and as his knowledge of business grows, his demands more closely correlate with his real value. The thing about it is, McGregor only has a certain amount of time in which to make his money. Losing changes auras and legacies and how the public perceives you. He can take this stand now because he’s at the peak of his popularity and power. If he’d lost to Nate Diaz or Eddie Alvarez, that wouldn’t be the case.
But like all great fighters, part of McGregor’s brilliance is in his timing. He is making his stand with the new ownership team at a moment in which it truly needs him.
As you noted, Chad, WME-IMG is under a lot of pressure to pay off its loan obligations. But that’s not the only financial strain working in McGregor’s favor. As MMAJunkie recently reported, the new owners also have whopping bonus targets that total $250 million, but in order to get that money, they have to meet huge earnings numbers, a goal that will be exceedingly difficult to meet with their biggest star on the shelf.
McGregor knows all this, and what does he do? First, he says he’s taking time off to take some stress off his pregnant girlfriend. Then he says his interest in making the Mayweather fight is serious and that he’s willing to stay on the sidelines until it gets made.
Either way, his message is clear. He’s indirectly telling the UFC that he’s willing to stay inactive and, correspondingly, that the promotion is going to lose out on money by letting him stay there.
Conversely, White’s "epic fall" comment is a shot back to remind McGregor of the UFC’s clout.
While that may not amount to an all-out war between the sides, it is definitely the continuation of tension. That is something that is not likely ever to go away.
When you are dealing with huge piles of money, everyone doesn’t just want a cut; they want the right cut. And all of McGregor’s actions—including starting his own promotion—clearly show that he plans to fight the UFC for every cent he believes he’s worth. Whether or not he gets the bout with Mayweather, his fight with the UFC—either publicly or privately—will go on.
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