Rumours and speculation have been building over the last several months regarding a rematch between Conor McGregor and Floyd Mayweather but this time facing each other in the Octagon in a mixed martial arts fight. Not that long ago if you had asked me the probability of these two fighting in an MMA bout I would have said it was next to zero. I reasoned at the time that while Mayweather is obviously hyper-confident in his abilities, he wasn’t delusional and knew he had no real chance at beating McGregor in his sport – or so I thought.

Gossip over a potential fight gained more creditability recently when Mayweather stated that he is planning to apply for an MMA licence and is training with UFC welterweight champion Tyron Woodley. And generally once enough hype gets behind a potential fight it becomes self-fulfilling.

There are two reasons why Mayweather would seriously consider a MMA fight. One, he’s as I said become delusional or two, he’s been offered a jaw-dropping amount of money. The latter is more likely, but who knows; maybe since he’s secured his perfect 50-0 boxing record he’s simply bored and wants a new challenge. He may not care if he loses one MMA fight, especially if he makes a fortune while doing it.

The MMA community’s reaction to the speculations has been a mix of dismissiveness and restrained excitement. Many would happily watch the fight but think it’s unlikely to happen.

Not only that, the overwhelming verdict is that Mayweather would lose – badly.

  • Matt Sera (former Welterweight Champion) – “He’ll [Mayweather] never survive fifteen seconds.”
  • Eddie Alvarez (former Lightweight Champion) – “He [Mayweather] will not survive inside of a cage. I know that and everybody in this sport knows that.”
  • Michael Bisping (former Middleweight Champion) – “Conor McGregor will literally have a field day with Floyd Mayweather.”
  • Joe Rogan (UFC commentator) – “If Conor McGregor was gonna fight Floyd Mayweather in MMA, it [a McGregor victory] is as close to 100 percent as anything ever gets ever.”

It’s almost a guarantee that McGregor would not just defeat Mayweather but demolish him. The most likely scenario that would play out is McGregor takes Mayweather to the ground and puts a submission on him within the first minute. The main reason the outcome is so predictable is because McGregor has years of BJJ and wrestling training while Mayweather as far as I’m aware has little to none. This is more than just an advantage. It is a silver bullet against a fighter who doesn’t know how to fight on the ground. We saw this dichotomy in the early days of the UFC when grappling arts and submissions were not widely known (see 1:38 in clip).

And yes, Mayweather is certainly being introduced to wrestling as he trains with a UFC champion but even still it would take years of hard training for him to get any near McGregor’s level. Then on top of this massive almost unfair grappling advantage is the fact McGregor is very skilled at throwing kicks, something Mayweather again has no background in. McGregor can kick Mayweather’s legs to knock him down or keep him at distance if his strikes become a threat. McGregor could similarly just spinning heel kick his head off.

If he’s serious about this, Mayweather’s best hope would be to focus as much as he can on takedown defence in his training and then try to blitz McGregor with punches early on in the fight. However this would be no easy task. McGregor has proven that he has high level striking abilities but more significantly a solid striking defence. Key word being defence – he doesn’t need to (and shouldn’t) get into a fist fight with Mayweather. We’ve already seen the boxing match; this time round all he has to do is avoid getting punched. It’s not impossible that McGregor eats a lucky haymaker in the opening ten seconds.

So not only does McGregor have two skills sets, grappling and kicking, that can completely negate Mayweather’s defence, he additionally has the boxing skills to – at the very least – protect himself from Mayweather’s only real offence, his elite level boxing. To put it more simply it’s somewhat similar to the game ‘rock, paper, scissors’. Each element specifically wins or loses against one of the other two elements so the game’s balanced. However in this case Mayweather is coming in solely with scissors against rock (albeit a very good pair of scissors) and likely doesn’t have time to develop a paper response.

While there is still doubt over whether McGregor and Mayweather will face each other in the Octagon, there have been separate reports that Mayweather is indeed planning to go into MMA but not to fight McGregor. Instead, he could possibly fight former pro-wrestling star CM Punk who has already fought once in the UFC in 2016. The star power these two could bring is massive and both the pro-wrestling and boxing audiences would undoubtedly tune in to watch them fight. More importantly it could be a more competitive match-up because CM Punk, not to be disrespectful, has very rudimentary skills and is still developing as an MMA fighter. Joe Rogan described him as “basically a beginner”. His one fight in the UFC ended in a submission loss and his performance was widely viewed as unimpressive. Hence, CM Punks’ general inexperience could balance out Mayweather’s grappling/kicking inexperience, not to mention Mayweather’s decades of real combat sport experience over the wrestling star’s entertainment career. The result being that we may very well have a fight on our hands.

Rumours and hype aside, it could just be Mayweather trying to keep his name in the headlines or indirectly gain attention for another boxing match. But if he and the UFC go through with this, then this could be the first billion dollar fight in history.