Dana White threw a bucket of cold water on the rumor that Floyd Mayweather and Conor McGregor will be fighting each other in a boxing match this summer.
“It’s not true; it’s just a tabloid story,” White said to Yahoo’s Kevin Iole. “And as far as I knew, Floyd is retired and he’s been on a world-wide vacation and hasn’t even been thinking of fighting.”
White was responding to a story published by British tabloid The Sun on Friday. The Sun reported that Mayweather and McGregor were set to fight this summer in boxing. They also included payment terms, with Floyd making around £100 million and McGregor hauling in £7 million.
News of such a fight came out of nowhere. McGregor has seen a meteoric rise in popularity and success in the UFC, as he won the featherweight championship, although he did surprisingly lose to Nate Diaz in March. Then he had a dispute with the UFC over how he would promote a fight at UFC 200.
McGregor is still under contract with the UFC. With him recently preparing for an MMA fight, it seems unreasonable to expect him to fight in boxing so soon. And even if he were transitioning to boxing, why would anyone expect him to immediately start with arguably the best fight ever? Oh, and he also supposedly would have to drop 25 pounds for the fight.
McGregor’s coach even poked fun at the whole thing:
It's really fine mayweather we're having here pic.twitter.com/gUF73OUOer
— Coach Kavanagh (@John_Kavanagh) May 6, 2016
Another aspect of this that makes the report seem sketchy is that Mayweather has been “retired” since September. If he were going to fight again, wouldn’t he need to start training? How would he be ready for a summer bout as The Sun says? There is proof that he has interest in a comeback, but why would he return so soon?
The whole report does not seem very consistent, but that’s not a huge surprise as The Sun isn’t exactly the most reliable publication.
