UFC President Dana White told reporters Wednesday he thinks a 50-50 purse split for the proposed boxing match between Conor McGregor and Floyd Mayweather Jr. would be “pretty fair.”
“We haven’t even got there yet,” White said of discussing financial parameters with Mayweather’s camp, per MMAFighting.com’s Marc Raimondi. “We haven’t even talked percentages yet. … Floyd can think whatever, but the machine that the UFC has and Conor McGregor alone is a machine by himself. I think that 50-50 is pretty fair.”
Earlier in May, White confirmed during an appearance on TNT’s Inside the NBA that he had put a bow on negotiations with McGregor’s camp and had shifted his focus to hammering out details with Mayweather’s group.
“McGregor’s side is done, I’m starting to work on the Mayweather side now,” White said, per MMA Fighting. “I got one side done, now it’s time to work on the other. If we can come to a deal with [Al] Haymon and Mayweather, the fight’s going to happen.”
On Wednesday, White said that if the fight does get made, he believes “conservatively” that it could produce somewhere between 2.5 and 4 million pay-per-view purchases.
White also told reporters he believes there is a “75 percent” chance the bout is agreed upon.
“I’m very bullish on this fight,” White said. “I think it happens. These guys are gonna have to come up with something way out of left field for this fight not to happen.”
Should the fight proceed as planned, it will undoubtedly be measured against Mayweather’s 2015 superfight against Manny Pacquiao. That clash, which Mayweather won by unanimous decision, totaled a record $500 million in pay-per-view purchases and was viewed by 4.4 million households, according to CNN’s Chris Isidore.
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