Mayweather-McGregor Entertainment Will Be During the Six Weeks of Hype Before the Fight (And It Will Be Free)
By ALAN SNEL
Sure, you can pay $100 for the pay-per-view for what’s going to be a boring boxing match.
Or you can enjoy the next six weeks of the best pre-bout entertainment you’re ever going to see for absolutely free.
In Las Vegas, sports have always qualified as one of several entertainment genres in this town and we are about to witness sports as entertainment in its purest form here in Sin City.
Boxer Floyd Mayweather vs. MMA fighter Conor McGregor in a boxing match. Snore.
Mayweather vs McGregor for a month and a half of words, rhetoric and social media posts — now that’s entertainment! Can’t wait for this “World Tour.” Yes, folks, the pre-event hype this week is being called a World Tour. (Hey, the Backstreet Boys are having a World Tour too!).
It already began with the world’s best MMA ringmaster — Dana White — stepping off a private Zetta Jet Sunday and meeting up with his pal, McGregor, at the airfield in Los Angeles.
No sports league or organization promotes its product better or is more talented at putting on an event spectacle than White’s UFC, which was sold for more than $4 billion last year. And McGregor is a colorful and entertaining UFC star with a bigger-than-life personality that will be on full display in the weeks leading up to the fight with “Money” Mayweather.
“Here we go,!” White exclaimed on Twitter with his trademark smile.
Indeed, here we go with the sounds of cha-ching.
Revenues from pay-per-view sales and gate receipts will easily pass half a billion dollars for this Aug. 26 boxing match at T-Mobile Arena, and I expect the number of pay-per-views to challenge the record 4.6 pay-per-views from the Mayweather-Pacquiao.
Both men are accomplished champions in their sports. McGregor was the first UFC fighter to hold two championship belts — featherweight and lightweight — at one time. He’s a great MMA fighter.
The 40-year-old Mayweather, who enjoyed showing the world his $100 million check from the May 2, 2015 purse of the Manny Pacquiao fight, is coming out of retirement and is considered boxing’s premier defensive fighter.
It’s a collision of two combat sports, but it will be a boxing match in the end — which is why McGregor is given a puncher’s chance and not much else in this bout.
No matter. Start enjoying the entertainment today, when the first press conference in the World Tour is held at Staples Center in Los Angeles Tuesday.
Then, it’s off to Toronto Wednesday, Brooklyn Thursday and London Friday.
They’re both gifted trash talkers and their pre-fight press conferences will be the stuff of unparalleled fight hype.
It’ll kick off six weeks of unprecedented fight hype the likes we have not seen in Las Vegas.
It’ll be world-class entertainment.
The competition Aug. 26 at T-Mobile Arena.
Not so much.
