The Bottom Line: McGregor-Mayweather a Bad Idea for Everyone in MMA, Save One

With his press conference on Saturday in Manchester, England, Conor McGregor made it clear he’s committed to aggressively pursuing a boxing match with Floyd Mayweather Jr. Mayweather himself has been outwardly receptive to the possibility, as well, and it’s no mystery why given the risk/reward ratio for the boxing legend. A McGregor-Mayweather fight would be a box office bonanza; and with the amount of money involved, it’s easy to understand why McGregor himself would be interested. The likely problems with the fight would apply to pretty much everyone else around him, from his sport to his company to his fans.

Ardent combat sports fans are savvy enough to recognize the importance of the rules to any fight. A boxer isn’t going to tend to do well under MMA rules, and an MMA fighter isn’t going to tend to thrive under boxing rules. There will of course be the occasional upset, but on balance, it’s a bad bet to compete against someone who has been training for years and years under his or her particular rule set.

Combat sports organizations know this, and for years, the ones with the power have protected their athletes against the athletes from other sports. The Ultimate Fighting Championship brought in James Toney because it would be a novelty and the former world champion and “Fighter of the Year” would almost certainly lose to the MMA fighter. K-1 at its peak brought in boxers and wrestlers to compete under kickboxing rules, and its kickboxers usually emerged victorious against stars from the other genres.

The key to the equation in making these gambits work is that casual fans aren’t as aware of the importance of rules as hardcore fans are. This becomes the case more and more as you bring in a larger audience. For a fight like Mayweather-McGregor, the audience would be massive, and for a lot of those fans, it’s just MMA vs. boxing with few caveats involved. If McGregor is dominated, and that’s the most likely scenario by a wide margin against arguably the most prolific defensive boxer in the history of the sport, for many fans it will tell the story that boxing is the sport for the dominant athletes. It’s a perception MMA has fought for years.

That negative fan perception in defeat is why elite fighters in a successful combat sport have rarely ever fought an elite fighter from another combat sport under the other fighter’s rules. They know that they would be sacrificing the prestige and perception of their sport for the short-term money grab, something that’s unnecessary when their sport is thriving. MMA presently is in a much healthier state than boxing, making it all the more remarkable that MMA’s top superstar would risk sacrificing his status and the sport’s status in an unnecessary fight against a boxer.

The best example of how this type of matchmaking can backfire comes from Japan. For years, Japanese pro wrestling cultivated a reputation as the spot for the toughest fighters by bringing in athletes from other sports and having them lose in worked fights to the Japanese pro wrestlers. In the early 2000s, as Pride Fighting Championships exploded in popularity, those Japanese pro wrestling outfits risked their pro wrestlers by putting them in fights with MMA stars. Many of these pro wrestlers came from amateur wrestling backgrounds, but they weren’t training regularly for MMA like the MMA fighters were; and for the most part, they got massacred.

Japanese pro wrestling still hasn’t fully recovered from the embarrassment that came to its reputation when its stars were put into shoot fights with MMA’s best. Yuji Nagata was a prime example, as he should have been one of the top pro wrestling drawing cards of the 2000s but had his reputation badly damaged from being annihilated in short order by Fedor Emelianenko and Mirko Filipovic. MMA is exceedingly unlikely to meet that sort of fate, but it would still be a strong perception blow for MMA’s clear top star to get humiliated against a boxer.

That reality is part of why it has been strange to see UFC President Dana White receptive to the McGregor-Mayweather fight. Rather than his lightweight champion defending against UFC stars who would become bigger stars for White if they beat McGregor, the Irishman would be further holding up another division with no upside for anyone in the UFC. The only way the fight could pay real dividends for the UFC is if it took place under the UFC banner. It’s pretty much impossible to imagine that happening given how different the UFC model is in terms of money distribution than what Mayweather is used to. A court battle by McGregor to compete in boxing outside the UFC would only make things worse from the UFC standpoint.

There’s also the matter of McGregor’s fans. McGregor has cultivated a devoted fan following. With his gift of gab, he has led those fans to purchase one major event after another. He would surely go all out in promoting a Mayweather fight, effectively selling his fans on spending huge amounts of money for what would almost certainly be an unentertaining massive disappointment. Manny Pacquiao essentially did the same thing, taking a cash grab for a fight he knew he was extremely unlikely to win -- Pacquiao was injured going into the fight -- and his support since has never been the same.

Maybe McGregor has such overwhelming self-confidence that he thinks without a single pro boxing fight he can defeat the undefeated best boxer of his generation. More likely, the savvy Irishman knows exactly what this fight would be but wants to go through with it anyway for the sake of his bank account. That’s certainly his prerogative in life, and it’s unfair to judge him for doing what he thinks is best for himself and his family. Still, there’s something disagreeable about McGregor laughing all the way to the bank while his sport and his fans suffer.