Mayweather Vs McGregor – Odds, Economics & Breakdown – Bet the fight

The Sideshow

Floyd “Money” Mayweather estimated $300 Million for 36 minutes

Conor “Notorious” McGregor estimated $100 Million for 36 minutes

Have they played the paying public for fools? Ok we all mostly admit we want to see it, touted by some as the exhibition of a lifetime, after all nobody walks away with a trophy or a belt rather a big fat heavy paycheck. How does this really depict our current society? Donald Trump is President? Lavar Ball is somehow a household name? Are we all played for fools?

Which leads us to the upcoming encounter between Floyd Mayweather and Conor McGregor.  

Mayweather, 40, is a boxer, one of the best of his generation. He’s also a pain in the ass and a notorious beater of women. McGregor, 29, is a mixed-martial arts sensation who has never boxed professionally and is likely to be tattooed even beyond his present state of body art by Mayweather. The purse for this fight is said to be the biggest of all time. A ringside seat is said to cost $10,000+.

This is a festival for fools, a carnival of greed.

Floyd Mayweather and Conor McGregor already have demonstrated that there is no bottom to this particular barrel and no reason to believe one will be located by the time the fight occurs on Aug. 26. The fighters’ traveling press rollout, which visited four cities in three countries in four days last month, had enough homophobia and racism to last months. Mayweather called McGregor a “f—-t.” McGregor called Mayweather “boy.”  McGregor rubbed Mayweather’s head, something made even UFC president Dana White queasy, and White has a cast-iron stomach for that sort of thing.

Supposedly, in 2017, we are beyond using crude bigotry to hype a sporting event. Supposedly, in 2017, we have matured as a society.

By now, not only are the principles behind this fight lost, but the principals are, too. Mayweather and McGregor are already halfway to becoming vessels for some of the worst impulses in our society, impulses on which the reins have been loosened over the past two years. The spectacle surrounding this fight already has set modern standards for public vulgarity and ostentatious indecency, both of which will be richly rewarded by a public with an apparently insatiable appetite for bread and circuses.

Can McGregor beat Mayweather? MMA fighters with boxing experience give us their take

On Aug. 26, UFC lightweight champion Conor McGregor will make his professional boxing debut against arguably the greatest boxer in a generation, which right there sounds like a borderline unsanctionable mismatch.

But that hasn’t stopped McGregor’s many ardent supporters from insisting that he has a good chance to beat Floyd Mayweather. They point to his size and strength. They point to Mayweather’s age (he turned 40 in February). They point to McGregor’s powerful left hand.

You put them all together, they say, and maybe you have a recipe for a McGregor upset. It’s a fight, after all. And while McGregor might not have a single boxing match to his credit, he’s got plenty of fights.

Still, those fighters with considerable experience in both sports say they aren’t optimistic about McGregor’s chances. While both boxing and MMA are built around two people punching each other in the face, the differences between the two sports are more numerous and more significant than many fans realize, according to those who’ve done both.

“They’re not the same sport,” said Marcus Davis, a retired veteran of 20 pro boxing bouts and more than 30 MMA fights, nearly half of which took place in the UFC. “Once you understand that it’s not the same sport, you can’t keep telling yourself that it’s just a fight. The gloves are bigger, the tactics are different. A lot of the defenses that work in boxing are ones you can’t even use in MMA.”

Davis learned that lesson the hard way. He began his pro boxing career when he was still just a teenager, but transitioned to MMA a decade later. In his boxing stance, Davis said, he couldn’t stop a takedown or check a leg kick. Head movement techniques that helped him avoid punches in boxing got him kicked in the face in MMA.

Trying to cover up with four-ounce gloves didn’t provide the same protection, and the fights often took place at completely different ranges. It was a rough transition at first.

“But then sometimes I’d go to MMA gyms, and people who knew I boxed would want to put on the gloves and do some boxing sparring with me,” Davis said. “And when we did that, and I could use all my old boxing tricks, my boxing stance and defense, then I’d just destroy them. They just couldn’t touch me because it was a completely different game. I knew how to play that game, and they didn’t.”

The same was true for Chris Lytle, a veteran of more than 50 MMA bouts and 15 professional boxing matches. He often trained for both sports at more or less the same time, showing up to fight gyms looking to do whichever kind of sparring was available that day. But his experience in boxing quickly taught him his limits.

“I thought I was a very good boxer,” Lytle said. “But I was definitely not a great boxer or an elite boxer, and there’s a real difference.”

It’s for that reason, Lytle said, that he’s not expecting much out of McGregor. While he regards Mayweather as “probably my least favorite fighter on the planet,” Lytle also has to be realistic about the difference in skills and experience.

“Conor, he’s a very good and maybe even a great striker for MMA,” Lytle said. “But there is a very big difference between boxing striking and MMA striking. Let’s say you think Conor is a good boxer, which is a pretty big compliment for someone who’s never had a boxing match. But even then, he’s definitely not a great boxer or an elite boxer, and Floyd doesn’t get hit by elite boxers.”

K.J. Noons, who competed professionally as both a boxer and a kickboxer in addition to his MMA career, likened the difference between the combat sports to the difference between tennis and racquetball.

“They’re both sports where you’re hitting a ball with a racquet, but they’re also very different,” Noons said. “One’s all wrist, and one is no wrist. It’s a similar thing with boxing and MMA.”

That’s not to say there aren’t options open to McGregor.

Cub Swanson, an MMA fighter who’s trained extensively with pro boxers, recommended a strategy that pushes the boundaries of the rules. His own sparring with boxers has taught him how different the sports can be. While boxers often fight right on top of each other, trying to establish a jab the same way in an MMA fight can result in punches that fall short by half a foot or more.

Instead of trying to match technical boxing skills with Mayweather, Swanson said, McGregor needs to make things messy.

“If it was me against Mayweather, I would grab him and dirty box and just do as much as I could that the referee would allow me to of grabbing and hitting and trying to slow him down before starting to chuck at his head,” Swanson said. “You’re not going to out-slick him in boxing. He makes amazing boxers look bad, so why box him?”

But as Lytle cautioned, that’s an approach that’s been tried before, only to be abandoned by those who attempted it.

“Everybody thinks the way to get him is to pressure him, make it a dirty, nasty fight, because you’re not going to outbox him,” Lytle said. “But everybody who’s tried, after two or three rounds they stop pressuring him. Floyd must have a little more pop than everybody thinks. Nobody’s been able to make that work against him.”

According to Davis, the real enemy for McGregor may be the sheer frustration of fighting a defensive genius like Mayweather.

“He’s going to have to work really hard just to get a clean look at him, but when he thinks he has an opportunity to hit him, then Floyd will tie him up,” Davis said. “I think he’s going to get desperate, he’s going to start lunging, because he’ll realize he can’t lay a glove on him. That’s when I think he’ll start getting hit with the harder shots, and I think he’ll probably get stopped within six rounds. If McGregor can make it more than six rounds, that looks bad for boxing.”

Even the hope that Mayweather’s age will slow him down enough for McGregor to catch him rings false for Lytle. He watched as Roy Jones Jr., long one of Lytle’s favorites, slowed down enough for younger boxers to begin tagging him with the same punches that never came close years earlier.

“The difference with Floyd is that he’s a technically very sound boxer,” Lytle said. “Floyd might be getting older, but he doesn’t take those chances that Roy did, where he would fight with his hands down and rely on his speed. Floyd has his hands in position the whole time, his head in position, his shoulder in position, plus he’s fast and athletic.”

But even if he’s not expecting a competitive fight, that doesn’t mean Lytle won’t watch.

“I’m sure I’m going to watch it,” he said. “Of course I am. I’ve got to see the spectacle train wreck just like everybody else. But I know I’m going to leave disappointed. If Conor is able to land five clean punches the entire fight, and I’m not talking body shots, I’ll be impressed.”

As for Davis, he’s less committed to actually seeing the fight. He “won’t spend a dime” of his own money, he said, but if a friend invited him over to watch?

“Yeah, I might go watch,” Davis said. “Or I might wait and catch the highlights on Facebook, because every fight that ever happens you know you can find at least some highlights, and that might be enough for me. There’s no way this becomes competitive.”

Noons is holding out slightly more hope for a McGregor surprise. Everyone with two fists and a willingness to throw them has a chance, he said, even if it’s not a great one. But whether McGregor can win is almost beside the point for him.

“Will it be competitive?” Noons said. “I don’t know. But it’s fun; it’ll bring eyes to the sport. At the end of the day, it’s entertainment. I’m going to watch it for sure.”

BETTING

THE ECONOMICS & THE NUMBERS

0: In case you’re unaware, it’s the number of times McGregor, on the verge of facing a consensus all-time great, has stepped into a ring for an officially sanctioned amateur or professional boxing match. He has, however, had 24 mixed martial arts matches, winning 21 and scoring 18 stoppages

5: Number of professional weight classes in which Mayweather, who began punching for pay at age 19, has won sanctioned world championships. He earned his first belt, at 130 pounds, in 1998, and has since added jewelry at 135 (2002), 140 (2005), 147 (2006) and 154 (2007).

50-0: The pro record Mayweather would reach with a win, eclipsing the 49-0 mark established by heavyweight champion Rocky Marciano between 1947 and 1955. No other widely recognized world champion has retired with a better record with zero losses and zero draws.

TMT50 and TBE50: The trademarks applied for by Mayweather Productions with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. TMT is short for “The Money Team,” while TBE stands for “The Best Ever.”

19.5 million: The number of buys Mayweather has helped generate as a pay-per-view fighter, including the three most-purchased bouts in history—2.4 million against Oscar De La Hoya in 2007, 2.2 million against Canelo Alvarez in 2013 and 4.6 million against Manny Pacquiao in 2015.

$600 million: The total projected gross revenue for the bout, which would place it second only to the aforementioned Mayweather-Pacquiao show two years ago.

$235: The proceeds of the public assistance check cashed by McGregor, shortly before his UFC debut in 2013.

$4.8 million: The price tag for the rare luxury car, a Koenigsegg CCXR Trevita, that Mayweather added to his collection in 2015. The magazine said the ride maxes out at 254 mph and goes from 0 to 60 in 2.9 seconds.

154 pounds: The agreed-upon weight for the Aug. 26 fight. Mayweather, most recently a full-time welterweight, has previously ventured into the junior middleweight for defeats of De La Hoya, Alvarez and Miguel Cotto. His heaviest weigh-in number was 151 pounds against Cotto. McGregor, meanwhile, fought at a 170-pound limit for a stoppage loss against substitute opponent Nate Diaz in 2016.

11, 1 and 2: The chronological and statutory advantages—in age (29 to Mayweather’s 40), height (5’9″ to Mayweather’s 5’8″) and reach (74 inches to Mayweather’s 72)—that McGregor will have when he enters the T-Mobile Arena.

2,170 days: The length of time, come fight night, that will have elapsed since Mayweather last scored an inside-the-distance victory, via fourth-round KO against Victor Ortiz.

13 seconds: The amount of time it took McGregor to stop Jose Aldo for his signature UFC win, capturing the organization’s featherweight (145 pounds) championship in December 2015. He’s since picked up the UFC lightweight (155 pounds) belt as well.

22 seconds: Duration of the sparring video released by the UFC showing McGregor working with former two-division world champion Paulie Malignaggi. Malignaggi has since left the McGregor camp and claimed on social media that the clip, including what McGregor labeled a knockdown, wasn’t at all representative of the 36 total minutes of sparring.