UFC 200 will still be big, but we’ll never know what the true potential was

Now that it really appears Conor McGregor isn’t facing Nate Diaz at UFC 200, it becomes an even crazier story in hindsight given the reasons for it falling through.If one of them was injured, sure. If somebody made an outrageous money demand, sure. But the biggest money event in the sport’s history falling apart because somebody refused to get on a plane to Las Vegas and attend a press conference and do a television commercial 11 weeks before the fight? It makes no sense. Yet, as best we can tell, that’s what happened. And it makes little sense that people who are in the business of convincing guys to take fights couldn’t somehow talk a fighting into coming in to promote a bout that he himself demanded. It’s even crazier since McGregor has made it clear he wants on the show in the fight he requested.At least one party (and maybe both) played a game of being stubborn, and the end result is that the potential record-breaking numbers for a giant show in 2016 will not be reached, at least at UFC 200.It feels like the UFC wanted to send a message that said, no matter who you are, you can’t miss a press conference. It’s a message that could cost them tens of millions of dollars. But perhaps it was a message they needed to send for the long run. And perhaps if UFC brass told McGregor ahead of time that he’d be removed from the card if he didn’t come to Las Vegas that week, he should have taken them seriously. While the UFC is going to lose more money than McGregor based on what happened, it’s not like they can’t afford it. For that matter, it’s not like the show won’t still be big. It will. That is, unless Jon Jones or Daniel Cormier gets hurt, which is always the risk heading into any major card. It already did in April ahead of UFC 197. Injuries an inherent part of the MMA business.Since the fallout, though, McGregor has gone onto his Twitter account and made all sorts of claims, including one saying that without him, UFC 200 won’t do 1.5 million buys. He also claimed that with him, UFC 200 would challenge the Floyd Mayweather-Manny Pacquiao pay-per-view record, which ended up at about 4,650,000 buys.”I had the May/Pac record primed ready to place MMA at the undisputed top. But it was not to be,” he wrote on Twitter, in exchanges where he boasted to hold all kinds of company records.When asked by one fan if he has overtaken Brock Lesnar as the biggest draw in MMA history — which is a title he can rightfully claim — he said, “It’s not safe to say. It is a fact to say. I hold PPV, gate, TV, Fight Pass and Embedded record. Even title fight KO.”He certainly holds the PPV revenue record. The gate record belongs to Georges St-Pierre vs. Jake Shields at UFC 129 at the Rogers Centre in Toronto, yet McGregor’s in second place for his fight with Jose Aldo at UFC 194. The TV audience record is still held by heavyweights Cain Velasquez vs. Junior Dos Santos, the first show held on the FOX flagship, with more than 9 million viewers, dwarfing the 3.3 …

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