Floyd Mayweather-Conor McGregor Tour Shows Huge Interest In This Fight
PHILADELPHIA, PA (CBS) — The groundswell will be starting this week. Floyd Mayweather and Conor McGregor will be going on a four-city press tour to promote their August 26 megafight in Las Vegas, starting this Tuesday at the Staples Center in Los Angeles (12:00 p.m. PT).
On Wednesday, the press tour will move to Toronto's Budweiser Stage (4:30 p.m. ET), on Thursday at Brooklyn's Barclays Center (5:30 p.m. ET) and conclude Friday in London's SSE Arena, Wembley (5 p.m. BST).
The reason why the tour is being held in arenas is because the fan interest has been so great, the arenas are the only venues large enough to hold them.
It's so large that media has to be credentialed to attend.
The highly anticipated media tour had UFC President Dana White predicting utter hysteria over the two fighters appearing together on stage for the first time publicly.
"It's going to be a (expletive) (expletive) show," White told reporters following Saturday's UFC 213 event in Las Vegas. "You know that. Absolute (expletive) show. So, I don't know. It's going to be crazy."
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There are still some glitches in what could be the biggest prize-fight in combat sports history. As mid July approaches, there is still no "official" venue for the fight. Tickets have not gone on sale because rapper/actor Ice Cube has reserved the 20,000-seat T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas on Saturday, August 26 for the championship game of his new Big-3 basketball league.
Mayweather Promotions are negotiating with Ice Cube to see if they can change their date.
In the meantime, Mayweather may have larger concerns brewing with the IRS. According to numerous reports, Mayweather filed a petition with the United States Tax Court for federal income taxes he owes for 2015, which was a huge year for Mayweather. He reportedly earned as much as $230 million for defeating Manny Pacquiao on May 2, 2015, at the MGM Grand Garden Arena.
Mayweather is guaranteed more than $100 million for this fight with McGregor, after what are expected to be enormous pay-per-view numbers, enabling him to possibly haul in $400 million, with McGregor expected to reportedly receive $75 million, five times more than his largest UFC payday.
For a fight panned by many, it has the attention of multitudes throughout the world. The Mayweather-Pacquiao fight received a record 4.6 million PPV buys. Mayweather-McGregor is expected to reach unprecedented PPV buys.
As proof, due to the overwhelming response from fight fans in Los Angeles and New York City, who grabbed nearly 30,000 tickets within hours of their availability, the Mayweather-McGregor World Tour event in Toronto on Wednesday, originally scheduled for the 3,191-seat Sony Centre for the Performing Arts, was moved to the 16,000-capacity Budweiser Stage.