Nobody Is Asking For Mayweather vs McGregor 2. The Money Might Demand It Anyway

By Larry Goldberg

No fan is marching in the street for this rematch. Nothing is signed and nothing is close. But this is not a fight the public would demand. It is a fight the ledgers would. It checks a box for Conor, a box for Floyd, and the biggest box of all for Zuffa.

Three days before UFC 329, McGregor told TMZ Sports he is open to running it back. “There’s conversations ongoing always with the boy,” he said. Then Saturday night happened, a blown knee and a 69 second loss to Max Holloway on the highest grossing gate in UFC history. Fans rolled their eyes at the Mayweather talk before the fight and they are rolling them harder now. But eye rolls have never once stopped a fight that made everyone at the table money. Go box by box.

Conor’s Box

McGregor does not need this fight, and that matters. He has fights left on his UFC contract. Holloway stood in the cage Saturday night and called for the trilogy himself, and Dana White told the post-fight press conference the assumption is a torn ACL, which puts Conor on a nine to twelve month rehab clock and back in play in 2027. He just drew a record gate coming off a five year layoff. He has a promoter, a platform, and a schedule.

What the rematch checks off for him is simple: the biggest single payday available to him anywhere on earth. His career high was not a UFC purse. It was boxing Mayweather in 2017, 4.3 million pay-per-view buys and nine figures. And a boxing match asks far less of a rebuilt knee than the Octagon does. No kicks, no takedowns, no scrambles. For a 37 year old coming off his second catastrophic leg injury, twelve rounds of planting and punching is the version of fighting his body can still cash checks with.

Floyd’s Box

Mayweather is Floyd Mayweather. He does not need rescuing and he has never needed anyone’s sympathy. What he needs is a fight that actually happens, because right now none of his do. The Pacquiao rematch was supposed to be September 19 at the Sphere on Netflix. The Sphere date died, the fallback dates died, and reporting now has it pushed to 2027 at the earliest. The Tyson exhibition was postponed after Tyson broke his hand in training. The Zambidis exhibition in Greece was stopped days before the bell by a court injunction, after promoter CSI Sports sued Mayweather claiming he took millions in advances and breached an exclusivity clause. Add the felony bad check charge in Las Vegas and the tax cases, and the sharpest dealmaker boxing ever produced is spending his 49th year in courtrooms instead of ballrooms.

The rematch checks his box too: one clean, enormous, professionally run event with a counterparty big enough to cut through the paperwork. The promoters currently holding Floyd’s contracts are fighting over advances measured in single digit millions. None of them can untangle it. The fight on the other side of that tangle is a sequel to the second biggest pay-per-view of all time. Floyd has spent his whole life following the money. The money has one door left.

Zuffa’s Box Is The Biggest One

For Zuffa, this fight is not about the fight. It is about what making it would prove. I laid out the machine in Zuffa vs. The World, Part Two: a nine figure annual Paramount deal, a Sela partnership built to absorb the cost of headline bouts, two to four super fights a year. The Conor Benn signing showed the mechanism. Sela funds the name, Zuffa builds the card underneath it.

The Mayweather situation is exactly the kind of knot that model exists to cut. Litigation is a moat against little guys. For a machine that size, it is a toll booth. Walk in, write a check, walk out holding the sequel to the second biggest pay-per-view ever. Remember why the first fight happened at all: the UFC held McGregor’s contract and was the only company that could deliver him, and Showtime wanted the easy money. That alignment dissolved the morning after, and no rematch was possible without it. Now the company that controls McGregor also owns a boxing promotion and the platforms underneath it. The alignment is not temporary anymore. It is the business model.

They are already selling to this exact audience. Friday night, Ryan Garcia, Shakur Stevenson and Conor Benn stood on stage at the UFC 329 ceremonial weigh-ins, boxing stars marketed to a record MMA crowd. The crossover fan the first Money Fight invented is the fan Zuffa is building its whole promotion around.

There is a quieter box on Zuffa’s card too. McGregor is a part owner of Bare Knuckle Fighting Championship, and when his UFC deal runs out, he will have options beyond the Octagon. A Mayweather rematch under the Zuffa banner keeps every McGregor dollar inside the house, on Paramount or Netflix, for what may be the biggest night he has left.

Could, Not Will

Let’s be honest about what this is. Nobody has announced anything. Floyd’s legal knots have to come undone, Conor’s knee has to heal, and both men have obligations in front of them, including a Holloway trilogy that practically booked itself Saturday night. And no, the fans are not asking for this. They were not asking in 2017 either. It sold 4.3 million buys anyway.

That is the thing about fights nobody asks for. They do not need demand. They need alignment. Conor gets his richest night, Floyd gets his cleanest one, and Zuffa gets to prove it can make anything. Three boxes, one pen. Nobody asked for this fight. The money is asking for all of them.