Search icon

Sport

14th Jan 2017

Dana White explains why he’s offering a 50/50 cut to Floyd Mayweather and Conor McGregor

Defends his guy

Darragh Murphy

Dana White’s $25 million offer to Floyd Mayweather quite literally led to laughter from the 49-0 boxing great.

White has insisted his offer is the only concrete one as talk intensifies around a super-fight between Mayweather and UFC lightweight champion Conor McGregor.

Earlier this week, Mayweather claimed that he had approached McGregor’s camp with a purse figure of $15 million in the hope of enticing the Irishman to make his boxing debut against ‘Money’.

But Mayweather demanded the lion’s share of the cut, as he claimed to be the bigger draw than ‘The Notorious’.

“We tried to make the Conor McGregor fight,” Mayweather told ESPN’s First Take. “They know what my number is. My number was a guaranteed $100 million. That was my number. We’re the A-side.”

White refutes Mayweather’s claim that he even made an offer and the UFC president is adamant that his is the only formal move to set up the fight as, on Friday evening, White publicly announced that he would be willing to give Mayweather and McGregor $25 million each, as well as a cut of pay-per-view revenue, to agree to the bout.

And while the retired boxer dismissed that offer, labelling White “a fucking comedian,” the UFC boss is urging Mayweather to sign on the dotted line.

“First of all, Floyd thinks he’s so much bigger than Conor. He’s wrong,” White told TMZ Sports.

“Floyd’s gone undefeated for 20 years, I give him all the credit in the world for doing that. But Conor’s been around for three or four years and for him to think he’s a much bigger star than Conor isn’t true.

“And I’m not going to pay him way more money than I’m going to pay my guy!

“Let me tell you what, we all know $25 million isn’t peanuts and so does he! He’s hanging his watch out the window… his watch is the problem.

“When you’re wearing a watch that’s $250,000, you’re going to need $25 million real quick pal. Real quick!”