Floyd Mayweather wants the sequel, and he doesn’t seem to care who’s grumpy about it. Bloody Elbow posted on X Friday that Mayweather believes a rematch with Conor McGregor could still happen, even with Dana White showing very little appetite for co-promoting another boxing-versus-MMA crossover. Good. Somebody in this business has to say yes to fun.
My position is simple. White should step aside, take whatever piece of the pie he’s entitled to, and let these two run it back in a boxing ring. Combat sports is starving for an unapologetic, big-money villain show, the kind where two guys spend months insulting each other and then dare you to pay to watch. Nobody on the planet sells that product better than Floyd and Conor.
The First One Already Proved the Math
Go back to 2017. Mayweather stopped McGregor by TKO in the 10th round, and the whole event was wildly lucrative. That’s the part people conveniently forget when they sneer at crossover fights. The result went exactly how the boxing purists said it would, and the money showed up anyway. People bought it. In huge numbers. They bought it because it felt like a comic book crossover, Batman versus Superman, if both of them were also the Joker.
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I love a great villain. Most fight fans do, even the ones who pretend otherwise in the comments. The problem right now is that the villain role is wide open and nobody is auditioning with any conviction. We get trash talk that sounds focus-grouped. We get beef that’s loud on social media and then evaporates the second two guys stand nose to nose and suddenly remember they share a manager’s group chat. Floyd and Conor don’t evaporate. Whatever you thought of 2017, the face-offs were never the weak part of the show.
Dana’s Lack of Interest Is the Least Interesting Thing Here
White’s reluctance makes sense from his chair. Co-promoting a boxing match means sharing the spotlight, sharing the decisions and sharing the headlines with a guy who has spent a career treating promoters like valet attendants. I get why that sounds like a headache.
But his comfort shouldn’t be the deciding factor in whether the biggest crossover attraction of the last decade gets a second act. White built a lot of his reputation on giving fans the fights they actually want to see. This is one of those fights, and Mayweather is out here publicly saying the door is open. If White doesn’t want to co-promote, fine. Then he should get out of the doorway and let the people who do want to make it go make it.
The sport also needs a palate cleanser. Too many champions right now fight like they’re protecting a 401(k). They take the safe matchup, win a decision nobody remembers by Tuesday and call it legacy building. A Mayweather and McGregor rematch is the opposite of that. It’s loud, it’s ridiculous and it doesn’t apologize for any of it.
The Best Argument Against It
The strongest case against a rematch goes like this: Floyd already beat him, it ended in a 10th-round stoppage, and asking people to pay again for a result they can probably predict is the definition of treating fans like ATMs.
I hate promotions that treat fans like ATMs. I really do. That’s exactly why this argument falls apart for me. The ATM move is charging premium pay-per-view prices for a card with one real fight and four filler bouts nobody asked for, then acting surprised when people complain. A Mayweather and McGregor sequel is the most honest hustle in sports. Everyone knows what’s on the menu. Two of the greatest self-promoters alive will tell you, to your face and for months, that they are coming for your money. You can say no. If you say yes, you’re paying for the build, the chaos and the chance that the guy everybody counts out does something strange. Nobody bought the first one believing it was a coin flip. They bought the event.
And for the record, McGregor made it into the 10th round of a boxing match against Floyd Mayweather. That’s enough of a fight for me to want to see what a second try looks like.
What Happens Next
Right now this is one man’s belief and another man’s shrug. Mayweather says the rematch may still happen. White, per the Bloody Elbow report, isn’t interested in co-promoting it. There’s no date, no venue and no signed paper, so treat any timeline you see floating around as noise until somebody official puts it in writing.
Still, I’d bet on the guy who said it out loud. Floyd has made a career out of getting the fights he wants on the terms he wants. If he’s telling the world the McGregor sequel is on the table, Dana White can pull up a chair or get out of the way. The rest of us will be over here with our wallets out, mad about it, buying it anyway.
