Manny Pacquiao vs. Conor McGregor: Everything We Know About The Rumored Fight

Whether you’re a fight fan or not, there’s a good chance that you watched when Conor McGregor fought Floyd Mayweather in August of 2017. It was a spectacle like we hadn’t seen until that point. There had been instances of crossover fights like when James Toney fought Randy Couture in the UFC and some of Anderson Silva’s boxing fights, but this was bigger than all of those together tenfold.

Despite the result being what it was, the event garnered enough money and attention that there have been talks of a rematch and even talks of Conor fighting other stars in the sport. The most recent on that list? WBA Super welterweight titleholder Manny Pacquiao.

When asked about the fight, Dana said that he didn’t know a thing about it, to which Conor hopped back on Twitter to call him out for lying, saying that Dana had, in fact, been involved and that there were legal letters to prove it.

Since then, the most interesting piece of news specifically about Conor vs. Manny has been on October 12th when Manny Pacquiao took to social media to announce that he had signed with Paradigm Sports and revealed that “big things” were coming. Conor is also managed by Paradigm, which kicks down a big hurdle in making the fight official.

Both Conor and Dustin were having trouble with Dana White at the time. Dustin was supposed to be fighting Tony Ferguson at UFC 252, but he felt it was time to negotiate a better contract for himself with his recent track record. Controversially, Dana took this to mean that he didn’t want to fight and was negotiating himself out of the fight, and he stated this publicly. Conor, as previously mentioned, has been trying to get a fight booked for a few weeks after his fight with Cowboy in January of this year. The leading rumor is that Dana isn’t willing to let a Conor fight pass when fans cannot be in attendance, paying good money for tickets. To put on a fight between Conor and anyone else during the pandemic, the UFC would be missing out on around $15 million in the gate.

Seeing the similarities in their situations, Conor tweeted Dustin, asking if he wanted to fight in an exhibition MMA fight for charity that had nothing to do with the UFC. It was an excellent chess move because the UFC would want everything to do with that fight if it were to happen. It put the ball in their court. Dustin knew exactly what was going on and agreed to it, and it only took a few days for Dana to come out and say that he was offering the pair the fight himself.