The rumors persist about a potential boxing match between Floyd Mayweather and UFC lightweight champ Khabib Nurmagomedov. Conor McGregor was the first UFC guy to go toe-to-toe with pound-for-pound undefeated boxing great Mayeather and it didn’t work out too well for him in the ring. But it did work out very well for him in his bank account and now Khabib wants a piece of that pie too.
Khabib wants the fight to take place in Russia and with the Nevada Athletic Commission’s current case against him and his reaction to that, we might not even see him back in the octagon again. And if he wants to box Floyd after that, Nevada certainly won’t let him back in their state to compete. But Russia? Hell, almost anything goes over there. They surely wouldn’t have a problem promoting that fight.
UFC President Dana White recently met with Team Mayweather and talked to ESPN about that meeting (via MMA Weekly).
“I had a meeting yesterday in Los Angeles about this,” White said. “I don’t want to say anything that’s going to make it sound like ‘wow this could happen’ but we had talks yesterday. I don’t think it’s going to happen. I don’t think the fight would happen in the UFC but they didn’t say no.”
It seems Dana is only interested in the fight if Floyd came to the UFC to do MMA. And we know that is never going to happen. However in regards to a Khabib vs. Mayweather boxing match, he actually did leave a little room for doubt.
“There will not be a boxing match. Obviously if it was something that Khabib really wanted to do, we’d sit down and talk about it but I don’t like anything about it. I haven’t talked to Khabib about it at all. His interest needs to be defending his title over here. That’s what he should be focused on.”
Then there was more double talk from the UFC’s head honcho.
“There’s a reason why Floyd Mayweather wants to fight my guys,” White said. “Because there’s big money there for him. Obviously, there’s big money there for us but I’m not into making those kinds of fights.
Uh yeah you are Dana. You just did it with McGregor. Why wouldn’t you do it with Khabib? What’s the harm at this point? Khabib has already hinted at retirement from MMA. And even if he does have a couple more MMA fights, at some point he could still box Mayweather. He would obviously get schooled to no end in that fight, but if we’re in the business of prize fighting, that’s going to be the biggest prize he could earn for himself.