Fans outraged as Mayweather-McGregor demand causes PPV providers, UFC Fight Pass to crash

Whether you bought it early or right on time, “The Money Fight” event headlined by Floyd Mayweathervs. Conor McGregor crashed out of the gate for many customers.

What is supposed to be the most widely distributed pay-per-view fight of all time ran into a host of problems beaming Saturday’s Showtime card to fans, resulting in a throng of angry tweets from fight fans and even UFC staff.

Just minutes after the pay-per-view main card started, UFC Fight Pass went down “due to overwhelming traffic,” according to the promotion’s online network, one of many carriers of the event Saturday at T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas.

“You may be experiencing log in issues,” UFC Fight Pass’ Twitter account wrote. “This will be resolved shortly.”

And it was, but only briefly. Shortly afterward, the feed again crashed, resulting in a wave of complaints and inevitable mocking from fans.

Even UFC commentator Jon Anik got in on the action, retweeting ESPN broadcaster Dick Vitale, who vented that his Frontier cable provider wasn’t returning phone calls. Anik had complaints about Xfinity.

“Feel your pain,” he wrote. “@XFINITY in Florida killing’ us. Leaving my house!”

It appeared buying the pay-per-view early, as organizers recommended, did not solve the issue.

“Anyone else having problems with #UFCFIGHTPASS @UFCFightPass? We bought the paper view yesterday to avoid these problems,” wrote MMA nutrition guru Mike Dolce.

On this writer’s feed, there were tweets reporting outages on Xbox’s live event function, Verizon Fios and the UFC.tv app on Smart TVs.

MMAjunkie was unable to immediately reach a UFC representative for comment. After UFC Fight Pass’ initial tweet, the online network went silent.

For more on “The Money Fight: Floyd Mayweather vs. Conor McGregor,” check out the MMA Events section of the site.