As recently as just a few weeks ago, Floyd Mayweather didn’t sound like a guy who really wanted to fight Conor McGregor. He was more than open to discussing the idea of doing it—Mayweather is open to talking about just about anything if it keeps his name in the news—but as far as actually going through with the fight? Nah. It didn’t appear that he was going to seriously entertain a potential bout with McGregor.
Something seems to have changed over the last few weeks, though. Maybe Mayweather has just talked about the McGregor fight so much that he’s actually starting to like the sound of it, or maybe he just realizes that he’s going to need to continue to hype it up in bigger and better ways if he wants to get the press that comes along with talking about it.
But whatever the case, Mayweather did an interview late last week and went as far as to suggest that he is "coming out to retirement" to fight McGregor, which might be the strongest statement he’s made with regards to the fight thus far. He seems more committed to it than ever before, and there have even been rumors about Mayweather and McGregor putting a hold on T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas for June 10 for a fight.
Why is Mayweather suddenly so into the fight? We don’t know. But UFC fighter Michael Bisping claims to know the reason behind it. During the debut episode of his podcast Believe You Me, Bisping said that he heard from "a friend of a friend of a friend" (always a reliable source!) that Mayweather was recently "scammed" out of a large amount of money. And while Mayweather obviously has plenty of money to spare, Bisping said he heard the boxer wants to recoup some of the money he lost by fighting McGregor.
"My bet is that the fight will happen," Bisping said. "Will it happen in June? I don’t know, that might be a bit too soon. But from what I understand, I was talking to someone in Las Vegas and I heard that Floyd recently got scammed out of a lot of money. The number was very, very big. I don’t think Floyd needs the money, but he wants to replace this money that he got swindled out of."
Bisping didn’t elaborate any further than that, and there is, of course, a good chance that he has no idea what he’s talking about. But if Mayweather did lose a sizable amount of money, agreeing to a fight with McGregor would suddenly make a lot more sense than it did before.
Regardless of whether what Bisping said is true or total BS, we would expect Mayweather to respond to it. Because if there’s one thing Mayweather can’t stand, it’s someone talking bad about his money. So keep your eyes glued to his Instagram page in the coming days.
