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06th May 2016

So… will Conor McGregor really be fighting Floyd Mayweather in a “billion dollar mega fight”?

Richard Beech

Twitter officially lost its sh*t today when a story emerged suggesting Conor McGregor and Floyd Mayweather were on the verge of signing up for a “billion dollar” mega fight.

It sounds exciting, in a sort of Alien vs Predator kind of way, that would actually probably just end up being five minutes of initial excitement, and then a slow decline into confusion and disappointment.

So in the interest of balance, here are the arguments why this fight might, and why it might not happen.

Why it might happen:

Money

If there’s one thing we know about Floyd Mayweather, other than the fact that he’s been involved in some of the least exhilarating fights of all time, it’s that he loves money.

He can’t get enough of it, even his toilet paper is made of money, and he buys that toilet paper with his money.

Conor McGregor is also a fan of money, as we know. Could he resist earning millions of dollars in exchange for (probably) getting quite badly hurt by Floyd Mayweather? Maybe not…

Beef

UFC 194: Aldo vs. McGregor
Conor McGregor and Floyd Mayweather have beef after McGregor said he’d love to knock him out in 30 seconds, so pride is at stake here.

But this very much concludes the very short list of reasons this fight might happen.

Why it might not happen:

Reality

This is real life, and not a movie – an important factor here, and we owe it to ourselves to keep this in mind.

Different sports

LAS VEGAS, NV - MAY 02: WBC welterweight champion Floyd Mayweather Jr. poses on the scale during his official weigh-in at the MGM Grand Garden Arena on May 2, 2014 in Las Vegas, Nevada. Mayweather will meet WBA champion Marcos Maidana in a WBC/WBA unification fight in Las Vegas on May 3. (Photo by Ethan Miller/Getty Images)

Conor McGregor is quite literally not a boxer, in case you hadn’t noticed. He is an MMA fighter, which is a fight sport, but is very different to boxing… in that it is a different sport.

This would be like Leicester City inviting the English rugby team to take them on in a football match at Wembley. That would probably be really quite sh*t, and the English rugby team would be rubbish.

McGregor would certainly put up a decent enough fight, he has the ability to box, he can throw a punch. But it’s a different discipline.

Training time

The claim is that the fight is likely to happen this summer.

Given that McGregor is, as we’ve previously stated, literally not a professional boxer. He would have to train, he’d have to train damn hard. We’re not talking about a standard fight here, we’re talking about a fight with one of the greatest boxers of all time… one of the most tactically astute boxers of all time.

Now, we know Ricky Gervais trained for that charity boxing thing a few years back within a short period. But McGregor is no Ricky Gervais…

Contracts

Many people have pointed out that it’s possible McGregor could have a contract clause with the UFC that would prevent him from just going to Las Vegas and fighting Floyd Mayweather.

Mayweather is retired

(Self-explanatory).

Would we love to see this fight happen?

Obviously. Everyone would.

But there’s a lot that would need to fall into place in order to make this happen, and neither fighter has backed up the claims that they are going to fight. So far all we have is an unnamed source.