On Conor McGregor, Floyd Mayweather, and our bottomless appetite for 'saying crazy (expletive)'

At first it sounded like a line from one of Conor McGregor’s self-produced promos: He’s so big time, a bunch of people were going to pay just to listen to him talk.

Not only would they pay, but they’d snatch up all the tickets until it was sold out. Then it would go up for grabs on pay-per-view, five bucks a pop, again, all just to listen to the man speak.

Remember back when he used to brag that he could sell out a soccer stadium shadowboxing by himself? Back then it was funny in large part because of how ridiculous it was. When he packs a room full of paying customers with a 75-minute interview, it starts to feel uncomfortably realistic.

That he did it the same night as a UFC event felt somewhat meaningful, even if accidentally so. You knew he wasn’t going to miss the opportunity to point out the significance. On social media before the event McGregor bragged: “Heading to do a Q and A in front of 5000 fans! You read that right. That’s more than UFC attendance tonight.”

(UFC on FOX 23 actually drew slightly more than 13,000 fans, according to UFC officials.)

Floyd Mayweather Jr.

Of course, once McGregor (21-3 MMA, 9-1 UFC) got there it didn’t take long for conversation to drift toward Floyd Mayweather Jr. and the continued talk of a big-money showdown in the sport of boxing. McGregor was more than happy to fan those flames, insisting that the next time he steps in to fight, “it will be through the ropes (of a boxing ring) with eight-ounce gloves.”

This naturally prompted a response from UFC President Dana White, who promised an “epic fall” if McGregor tries to ditch his UFC contract for a boxing match. Lest you worry that he was taking McGregor’s talk too seriously, White also suggested that “when you’re about to do a pay-per-view that you’re charging people five bucks to listen to you talk, I’m sure you’ve got to say some pretty crazy (expletive).”

This, by the way, was coming from a man who recently made Mayweather a “real offer” of $25 million to fight McGregor in a UFC-promoted event. But then, Mayweather reportedly made more than $200 million for his fight with Manny Pacquiao. The last fight of his career came with a guaranteed purse of $32 million before a single pay-per-view was sold (and not many were sold in the end), making White’s “real offer” little more than an attention-getting invitation to take a pay cut.

In other words, McGregor isn’t the only one “saying pretty crazy (expletive)” these days. In fact, that’s pretty much where we are with this whole conversation. We are firmly in the saying pretty crazy (expletive) zone, and there’s a very good chance that we’ll never, ever leave.

We love this sort of thing in combat sports. We must, or else we wouldn’t be so easily and reliably taken in by it. Maybe we enjoy the fantasy aspect of it, all the what-if games we can play with hypothetical match-ups like this. Maybe we like being tortured by all the painstaking details standing in the way.

And that’s the other thing, is that while no single obstacle to this fight is utterly impassable, they’re all tricky enough to keep the fight a distant dream for now. Even if you can talk yourself into believing that McGregor and Mayweather will eventually throw padded fists at each other’s faces, you know it’s not going to be any time soon. It’s not like either of these guys needs to hurry up and do the fight so they can make rent.

The good news is, that leaves plenty of time for saying crazy (expletive) about it, which is evidently a pretty popular pastime. Of course, that’s also the bad news, at least for those of us who like to have a plausible possibility of a fight actually happening before we get too excited about how it’s going to go.

And yet, you know the saying of crazy (expletive) will continue as long as the demand for it does. Because it’s not like the supply is ever going to dry up.

For more on the UFC’s upcoming schedule, stay tuned to the UFC Rumors section of the site.