Floyd Mayweather Jr. vs. Conor McGregor is official. It’ll take place Aug. 26 in Las Vegas, per social media posts by both men after a report by Kevin Iole of Yahoo! Sports.
The question now will turn again to this: Is there any chance McGregor, a UFC champ, can win a boxing match against one of the best boxers in the history of the sport?
UFC president Dana White was on ESPN’s SportsCenter on Wednesday. He’s obviously been speaking a lot to McGregor during this negotiation. And “The Notorious,” as always, is supremely confident.
“He is absolutely 100 percent positive that he wins this fight,” White said. “I stopped doubting Conor McGregor a long time ago.”
McGregor is currently a +700 underdog on the 5Dimes online sports book. Mayweather is an -1100 favorite.
White said the bout would take place at T-Mobile Arena and the weight will be 154 pounds. That’s closer to McGregor’s current 155-pound weight class than Mayweather’s 147-pound division. White added that both men will wear 10-ounce gloves for the contest.
For as many moving parts and as much money involved as there is likely to be — probably in the range of a half a billion dollars — White said the negotiations actually were not that difficult.
“Negotiations went smooth,” White said. “Floyd is surrounded by some smart people and we got this thing done. The impossible deal is now done.”
Now that McGregor has a taste of boxing and the kind of money he can generate with someone like Mayweather, will he want to come back to the UFC? White believes he will. Actually, the UFC boss said McGregor has told him he wants to fight again for the UFC this year.
“That’s one of the million reasons why people love Conor McGregor,” White said.
As for the boxing people, Oscar De La Hoya specifically, who have trashed the fight, White said there is an obligation for promoters to deliver fights people want to watch. And this one qualifies.
“This is a fight that the fans demanded,” White said. “The fans wanted to see this fight. It’s the most talked about fight on the planet right now. And it will be the biggest fight ever in the history of two people punching each other. They can be as disgusted as they want. It’s what people wanted to see.”
Mayweather has said he wouldn’t come out of retirement unless he was getting $100 million. White would not confirm purse figures on either side, but said certainly everyone will be making a boatload of money.
“I don’t think anybody is bummed out about this deal,” White said. “The negotiations with Floyd were great. Everything went smooth with Conor. It went a lot easier than I thought it would go and everybody is walking away from this thing happy.”