Dana White complained about Showtime, and now Stephen Espinoza and Conor McGregor are both chiming in.
Dana White recently come out to say that following Mayweather vs McGregor, he has grown from distrusting to now despising their broadcast partners in Showtime. As for why he vowed to “never work with them again,” the UFC president brought up the way Showtime handled their press release about the event’s pay-per-view buys.
Showtime announced that MayMac drew 4.3 million pay-per-view buys in North America, falling just short of Mayweather vs Pacquiao’s 4.6 million sales in the region.
White was upset about this, bringing up the global pay-per-view numbers to claim the fight was the biggest fight in combat sports history.
Showtime executive Stephen Espinoza has since responded to White’s expletive filled rant.
Sounds like he’s upset because we committed the cardinal sin of telling the truth (when we released the accurate total for N. American PPV buys on MayMac).
Strange that telling the truth, in a press release vetted by all parties in advance, is something to be “despised” for. https://t.co/rFxKXz0Bjz
— Stephen Espinoza (@StephenEspinoza) January 5, 2018
Conor McGregor has also chimed in, once again calling Espinoza a “weasel”, and saying they’re number one globally.
Shut your weasel mouth. Who gives a fuck about the North American numbers when we are the GLOBAL KINGS you shmuck. WORLDWIDE. No.1! https://t.co/tq5Gj1Os7Y
— Conor McGregor (@TheNotoriousMMA) January 5, 2018
Espinoza didn’t hesitate to respond to the UFC fighter as well.
LOL…except that it wasn’t #1 in worldwide revenues either. https://t.co/QXy9CWtKFy
— Stephen Espinoza (@StephenEspinoza) January 5, 2018
Mayweather vs Pacquiao drew 4.6 million in North America, and others have reported that it had 5.5 million buys globally back in 2015. Mayweather vs McGregor on the other hand, drew 4.3 million in North America, and according to White, 6.7 million globally (initially his estimate was 6.5 million).
Showtime hasn’t announced a global number for this McGregor event, and they never really did for previous Mayweather events either. It is also interesting to note that neither White nor McGregor are disputing the North America numbers that Showtime did release.
So if that number is accurate, is there a different reason White suddenly put Showtime on the same boat as his least favorite promoter in Bob Arum? Or is this just mainly about spinning two very different statistics to the public and being upset that Showtime didn’t call them “Number 1”?