UFC lightweight champion Conor McGregor has admitted that he is ‘in negotiations’ for a lightweight unification bout with Tony Ferguson
He is far from relishing the opportunity to take on “El Cucuy”, however.
In fact, McGregor believes the fight is simply bad business and is holding out for terms which will ‘entice’ him back into the octagon for the first time since November 2016. While claiming that a fight with Ferguson is hard to get excited by, the Irishman still maintains that the fight may still happen:
“We’re in negotiation stage right now. That’s a lengthy process,” McGregor told the BBC (via MMA Weekly). “They’ve got to make me excited about it. I came from a crazy event, a record-breaking event, the billion dollar fight it was labeled. I made insane money. Then the opponents they’re trying to line up for me, an opponent [Tony Ferguson] with a $600,000 gate in Las Vegas.
“A $600,000 gate in Las Vegas is unheard of, it’s abysmal. So it’s hard to get excited about that. 100,000 pay-per-view buys compared to my 6.5 million pay-per-view buys.”
Granted, McGregor will find it near impossible to pull in a fraction of the “6.5” million PPV buys (official numbers have never been confirmed) he managed in his bout against Floyd Mayweather Jr. Clearly using this as a frame of reference, “The Notorious” is finding it hard to indicate any interest in the fight as a result :
“It’s a hard one to get excited about, but we’re in the negotiation stage,” McGregor said. Can they entice me? No doubt they can. Have they done yet? No.”
