There may finally be some concrete information regarding the Floyd Mayweather-Conor McGregor super fight. There was a report that came out yesterday that Mayweather Promotions plans to request to the Nevada State Athletic Commission a date for an unknown Mayweather Promotions event.
Boxing and MMA fans should not officially mark their calendars yet because it is not 100% confirmed that the request for the August 26th date is for the Mayweather-McGregor fight. There is a chance that it could be for another boxing match, with Mayweather Promotions hosting the show.
It was originally reported that Mayweather Promotions would be requesting the date from the state athletic commission along with Showtime as the television provider, Mayweather’s broadcast home. Now it is expected that won’t be the case because a deal with Showtime for the potential pay per view fight has yet to be finalized. That does not mean however that the fight won’t be happening on August 26th.
The expected venue for the fight is T-Mobile Arena, which seems to be the new home for all major sporting events in Las Vegas. The highly anticipated fight between two of the best boxers in the world Gennady Golovkin and Canelo Alvarez will be taking place there just a few weeks later on September 16th.
McGregor and the UFC have recently worked out a deal regarding how much money each side gets in what is expected to be a massive pay per view generating millions of dollars. The UFC star has not competed since he became a two division world champ back in November 2016. As for the deal between McGregor’s side and Mayweather’s, talks are still ongoing between WME-IMG, UFC’s ownership group, and Mayweather adviser Al Haymon as they work to finalize the agreement.
When asked about the current state of negotiations between the two parties, Showtime Sports executive vice president and general manager Stephen Espinoza said, “There are negotiations ongoing, but none of us wants to turn this into the circus that the Mayweather-Pacquiao negotiations were, so I think it’s best if we keep all the business discussions private until the deal is done.”
The main reason why August 26th is expected to be the date for Mayweather-McGregor is because the other mega fight, Golovkin-Alvarez, scheduled their fight for September 16th. That was the date Mayweather-McGregor were initially targeting, however, Golden Boy and K2 Promotions struck a deal with that date. There was speculation after their date was taken that Mayweather-McGregor would still fight on that date as well to take business away from the other fight.
But it was reported that when making the deal, Golden Boy also made a side deal with various Vegas casinos and locations prohibiting that Mayweather-McGrgeor be held on the same day. This was done because Vegas was not guaranteed to be the location for Golovkin-Alvarez, there were other cities in the running as well.
As part of the agreement, a potential Mayweather-McGregor fight cannot happen within three weeks of Golovkin-Alvarez. August 26th is three weeks before September 16th.
As for what fights will be on the undercard, only boxing is expected to take place during the event. Mayweather has stated that he wants his fighters signed with Mayweather Promotions to be on the undercard of his fight. Light heavyweight Badou Jack and junior lightweight Gervonta Davis both could be competing on the undercard of Mayweather-McGregor.
Featured Image via John Locher/AP Photo
