Conor McGregor is predicting that UFC 205 will smash through the two million pay-per-view mark for the first time. If it does, he could be on for a pay-day in excess of $20m.
Even for his recent standards, that is a remarkable amount of money to take home.
McGregor is far and away the highest earning fighter on the UFC’s roster and has headlined three of the promotion’s biggest five PPV events in 2015 and 2016.
According to Patrick Wyman of Bleacher Report, McGregor-headlined events in 2016 – all two of them – have made the promotion $100m.
It is a long, long way from McGregor’s early years in the fight game. John Kavanagh, his coach, reveals just how little the Dubliner was earning in his first five years on the MMA scene. He tells the Sunday Independent:
“Well it wasn’t easy. Conor was on the dole, earning €100 a fight and training at the height of winter in a cold gym. Now, I don’t care how passionate you are, but there are always going to be periods thinking ‘F**k this! What am I doing here?”
He adds, “Conor’s annual earnings for that five-year period was something like €1,500 a year. There was no money and I was running out of ideas. The UFC was a closed shop.”
Tot that up and that is €7,500 (around £6,700, these days) earned over five years, 14 fights and a hell of a lot of cold winter nights in Straight Blast Gym.
In early 2013, McGregor was a two-weight Cage Warriors champion and on a seven-fight win streak. He was beginning to turn heads but there was still no concrete interest from the UFC. Kavanagh reveals his fighter was offered a contract of €1,000 (£900) a month. The deal would see him turn over 20-25% of his future earnings.
“I begged him not to sign. I literally ripped the deal away from him,” he says.
Kavanagh’s instincts worked out for the best. He picked up the phone soon after that contract debate and passed on the offer to McGregor – the UFC wanted him to fight Marcus Brimage in Sweden. They snapped up the offer.
Four days before his UFC debut, McGregor and Kavanagh drove to Dublin Airport together to catch a flight to Sweden. On the way, McGregor stopped to pick up his dole payment.
He stopped Brimage in the first round, won by TKO and hollered, “Dana… 60 Gs baby!”
He pocketed $16,000 for the fight but earned another $60,000 for ‘Knock-out of the Night’
McGregor was on his way.
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