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According to recent reports, as well as a recent Instagram post, there’s a chance that fight fans might be treated to a rematch between the UFC’s biggest star, Conor McGregor, and boxing legend Floyd Mayweather.
Conor McGregor and Floyd Mayweather fought in 2017, with Mayweather winning via TKO. If the rematch goes ahead, will it really garner the hype that the original did?
In all honesty, the answer is probably no. This fight will simply not match up to the hype of the original.
Here are five reasons why the hype behind a potential rematch between Floyd Mayweather and Conor McGregor won’t be the same as their first fight.
#5. The novelty around fights like Conor McGregor vs. Floyd Mayweather is now gone
When Conor McGregor and Floyd Mayweather faced off in the boxing ring in the summer of 2017, it was easy to see why this so-called ‘Money Fight’ was a massive deal in combat sports.
Not only did it pit the two biggest drawing cards from boxing and MMA against one another, but at that time, clashes between high-level boxers and MMA fighters were relatively rare. 2010 saw James Toney step into the octagon to face Randy Couture, but outside of that, such fights were few and far between.
However, that hasn’t been the case since Mayweather and McGregor’s first fight. Largely due to the rise of YouTuber-turned-boxer Jake Paul, we’ve seen multiple former UFC stars step into the squared circle, including former middleweight kingpin Anderson Silva, as well as welterweight standouts Tyron Woodley and Ben Askren.
Therefore, the novelty around seeing a fight like McGregor vs. Mayweather is long gone, meaning that a lot of the allure around the fight no longer exists.
The first fight was easy to build up as it was the first of its kind, but a rematch could well be seen as just another fight, meaning that the hype just won’t be the same.
#4. Floyd Mayweather is no longer at the top of the boxing game
In the world of combat sports, time practically flies by, and so it’s easy to forget that Floyd Mayweather’s first bout with Conor McGregor came almost five years ago, in the summer of 2017.
At that point, ‘Money’ had already been officially retired from boxing for just under two years, but when he stepped into the ring to face ‘The Notorious’, it was arguable that he was still at the peak of his powers.
After all, just two years before that fight, he’d outclassed Manny Pacquiao and Andre Berto. By the time that his clash with McGregor came around, he was only 40 years old and was probably only just past his athletic peak.
Now, though, Mayweather is 45 years old and may well be 46 by the time any kind of rematch with McGregor might come around. His only fights in the five years that have followed their initial clash were a pair of largely pointless exhibitions against kickboxer Tenshin Nasukawa and YouTube star Logan Paul.
With fighters such as Oleksandr Usyk, Terence Crawford and Canelo Alvarez now sitting at the top of the mountain in boxing, there’s probably an argument to suggest that Mayweather is yesterday’s man, even in terms of his drawing ability.
Given that he’s no longer at the top of the boxing game, then, it’s safe to say that it’ll be much harder for anyone to hype a Mayweather vs. McGregor rematch than it was for their initial meeting five years ago.
#3. Conor McGregor has lost his shine entirely due to a string of losses
Floyd Mayweather might be past his physical prime now in terms of his age, but thanks to his lengthy undefeated record, ‘Money’ still has a lot of his lustre. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for Conor McGregor.
‘The Notorious’ is still the UFC’s biggest star and drawing card, but it’s fair to say that he’s fallen on hard times since his peak, which came prior to his first clash with Mayweather.
Before his excursion into the world of boxing, McGregor had only ever lost once inside the octagon, a defeat to Nate Diaz that he later avenged. His wins over Jose Aldo and Eddie Alvarez made him the first fighter to hold two UFC titles simultaneously, and he looked like he was well on his way to becoming a legend.
Since then, though, ‘The Notorious’ has fought just four times, picking up one win over Donald Cerrone and suffering crushing defeats to Khabib Nurmagomedov and Dustin Poirier.
With every day that goes by, it feels like McGregor will never quite reach the peaks he initially climbed to in the octagon. While he’s still a big name, it’s safe to say that he doesn’t have the same aura that he did in 2017.
Nobody really believes McGregor is unbeatable as many fans did back then, meaning that it’ll be very hard for anyone to get hyped for a rematch between the Irishman and Mayweather, particularly inside the boxing ring.
#2. Everyone remembers what happened in the first fight
One of the biggest reasons that it’ll be hard to hype up a rematch between Floyd Mayweather and Conor McGregor is that everyone remembers exactly what happened in their first meeting.
Put simply, while he did have some brief success in the early rounds of the fight, McGregor was widely outclassed by Mayweather, who simply outboxed him en route to his 10th-round TKO victory, his first stoppage win since 2011.
Prior to that first meeting, there were a number of fans who actually believed that ‘The Notorious’ might stand a chance against ‘Money’. That was largely because he was closer to his athletic prime and had displayed incredible knockout power and timing inside the octagon.
However, the fight demonstrated the big gap between an MMA fighter’s boxing skills, even a high-level one like McGregor, and a specialist like Mayweather. In the five years that have followed, it’s hard to imagine anything can have changed.
Given that the first fight is still fresh in the eyes of many fans, nobody is really going to expect a rematch to go any differently, meaning that it’ll be very tricky for anyone to hype it up quite like they did the first time around.
#1. Nobody was calling for a rematch between Floyd Mayweather and Conor McGregor in the boxing ring
After Floyd Mayweather knocked out Conor McGregor in their boxing match in the summer of 2017, it’s safe to say that nobody was really calling for a rematch between the two in the squared circle. After all, ‘The Notorious’ was widely outclassed.
However, there probably would’ve been plenty of interest in seeing the two men square off in the UFC’s octagon under MMA rules, even if those rules were slightly modified.
Unsurprisingly, though, Mayweather was never too enthused by the idea. So the potential for a rematch ended up being largely forgotten, with ‘Money’ essentially heading into de facto retirement.
The recent reports of a rematch between Mayweather and McGregor, then, have largely been met with an apathetic reaction, essentially because nobody was calling for them to fight in the boxing ring again.
Had they teased a possible meeting in the octagon, then the combat sports world probably would’ve been buzzing right now. However, to try to hype up a rematch of a fight that saw one combatant outclassed is likely to be near-impossible, meaning that the build to this prospective clash won’t be the same as it was the first time around.
