It’s been fascinating to watch the Irish fighting superstar evolve in recent years but the Conor McGregor boxing blueprint essentially, is something that’s been done before – and not that long ago.
The Conor McGregor boxing association came up earlier this year when he and Floyd Mayweather were linked with one another in a potential spectacle showdown in a boxing ring, that never came to fruition.
Mayweather said recently that he tried to make the fight but it wasn’t meant to be, essentially.
The whole thing for me looking back on it all now is much more clear, as to what was really going on. It was simple hype and PR 101 where both guys leveraged each other’s star statuses to drum up publicity.
Did it work? Of course it did. I wouldn’t be surprised it it wasn’t agreed upon behind the scenes by both men and their teams in the first place.
But when you look at what McGregor’s been doing these last few years with his promotion and trash talk, it’s the exact same model really as Floyd Mayweather used in the boxing pay per view business a few years back.
Now McGregor is the man using that trash talk strategy to polarise opinion between not only fans within his sport of mixed martial arts, but even those in boxing too.
You might remember that Mayweather tried some of this cross over appeal tactics to other areas too during his career, notably with a pay per view wrestling appearance on the WWE against wrestler ‘The Big Show’.
McGregor recently more or less called out the entire WWE roster on social media. Co-incidence? I think not.
He also brought up Mayweather’s name again this week at the press conference in New York to announce UFC 205 at Madison Square Garden.
It’s a model that has proven to work and with Mayweather during the week quoted with TMZ as saying:
“If he did steal my blueprint it’s a good thing. He’s a hell of a fighter. He can fight, he can box really good. As far as stand up, he’s very good.”
Combine these comments with the fact that McGregor likes to always talk about the money the UFC pays him, similar to how ‘Money’ Mayweather promoted his character in boxing towards the end of his professional career – it doesn’t take a genius to work out what McGregor is doing.
And could you blame him?
It certainly seems to be working and has drummed up more interest out of any professional fighter in boxing or the UFC over the last two years.
(Image source and credit: Sportsjoe.ie)
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