Showtime Executive: Floyd Mayweather vs. Conor McGregor Targeted For Early Fall
It was revealed last week that UFC President Dana White had finally come to terms with UFC lightweight champion Conor McGregor on an agreement to fight boxing legend Floyd Mayweather. Following McGregor’s side of the deal being finalized, White stated that he would now turn his attention to negotiations with Mayweather’s team in the hopes of setting up the fight, which is being targeted for later this year. After the news had broke, Mayweather came out and stated that he looked forward to signing his end of the deal. However, he insisted that there’s “no rush” in getting the deal done. It appears that Mayweather may be changing his mind.
Executive Vice President of Showtime Sports Stephen Espinoza stated in a recent interview with FightHype (transcript courtesy of MMA Fighting) that they would be willing to wait until next year if they had to. He also noted that both Showtime and Mayweather are targeting an early fall date for the proposed super fight.
“I think the date really is a function of how long it takes to get a deal done because the reality is, it took a long time for the UFC and Conor to reach an agreement to allow Conor to participate. Now the real negotiations start which is the Floyd side versus the Conor-UFC side. If that drags on then you’re probably looking at late this year. If it really drags on then you’re looking at early next year. But if people are as motivated as they seem to be – I know how badly Floyd wants it – if we get this wrapped up pretty quickly we could be seeing it early fall. That’s the goal. That’s what we’ve heard from Floyd. Now it’s just getting into a room and seeing if people will be reasonable on the kind of deal that they’re looking for.”
Espinoza stated in an interview last month that negotiations for the bout were “at a standstill.” This led to speculation that this was due to the UFC not being interested in facilitating the fight for fear of losing their biggest star permanently. With McGregor and White getting their end of the deal done, Espinoza appears to be more confident that the fight will happen. The biggest boxing fight of the last several years, Canelo Alvarez vs. Gennady Golovkin, is booked for September 16th but Espinoza is not worried about the date, which was loosely being targeted for Mayweather-McGregor.
“I’m not sure it matters because we’re dealing with an event that’s massive. The only comparison that people can really make is Mayweather-Pacquiao, and you could have done that any day except Super Bowl sunday and it would’ve been massive. So I don’t think the date will make a difference commercially. . . The Mexican holiday has a been a date that Floyd really elevated, but it’s not a date that Floyd needs to make [the fight] bigger. That fight will make the date not the date making the fight. There are some fights where putting them on those dates makes it bigger and adds to it; this one is gonna be huge no matter what date it’s on so really, it’s a function of what works for Floyd in the business negotiation and his preparation.”
Despite Alvarez vs. Golovkin taking up the date real estate, Espinoza isn’t worried. The belief within the combat sports world is that the fight will do extremely well not only with live attendance but those who want to see the fight on PPV (pay-per-view). Some are even projecting it to draw five million buys on PPV, which is a massive number. Espinoza isn’t confident that the fight will do that well, but he does think that it could surpass Mayweather-Pacquiao, which is the current best selling PPV of all time.
“It’s tough to say that because even before Mayweather-Pacquiao my prediction was 3-3.5 million buys. I said after the fight that I wasn’t sure that we’d ever see some event in my lifetime to surpass it. Just because it was so big, I hesitate but at the same time, I have trouble thinking of a significant group of people who bought Mayweather-Pacquiao who would then say, ‘No, I’m not gonna buy Mayweather-McGregor,’ and since you are drawing from two distinct fan bases, it might give that record a run for the money.”
