Morning Report: Joe Rogan says it’s ‘very possible’ Floyd Mayweather vs. Conor McGregor could go distance

The Conor McGregor saga marches on.

As has been exhaustively covered, the UFC featherweight champion is engaged in a dispute with Zuffa over promotional duties. He was pulled from his main event spot at UFC 200 and since then has been active on social media commenting on the situation and attempting to take the UFC to task for not allowing him to fight at the event. Then this weekend, things took another turn when rumors began to circulate about McGregor fighting retired boxer Floyd Mayweather in a boxing match. McGregor himself added fuel to the fire by tweeting a photo of a fight poster with the two stars facing off.

Mayweather retired last September after his lackluster defeat of Andre Berto for what he insisted was to be his final goodbye from the sport. However, most in the boxing world held little faith in Mayweather staying gone for good and speculation was stirred up again when Mayweather’s company filed for trademarks involving the No. 50. Mayweather’s current career record is 49-0 so filing for trademarks on “50” would suggest he intends to un-retire in an attempt to pass Rocky Marciano’s legendary career mark of 49-0.

Speculation around Mayweather’s return centered predominantly around a rematch of the highest grossing PPV of all time, his 2015 bout with Manny Pacquiao. However, in the past week Mayweather’s father made comments about the possibility of his son facing McGregor as has Mayweather himself. With talk of a Mayweather-McGregor fight taking over headlines, Joe Rogan took some time on his podcast to comment about the possibility of the match-up.

“I don’t think [McGregor can fight Mayweather]. I would imagine, unless the UFC is involved, [or they let him out of his contract] and I can’t imagine they would be willing to do that and I can’t imagine that they would let him fight Floyd Mayweather.”

UFC contracts are notorious (pun absolutely intended) for being difficult to get out of. Randy Couture famously went to war with the UFC to chase down a fight with then heavyweight world beater Fedor Emelianenko but he was eventually forced to give up his quest because his contract proved ironclad. Historically, the UFC has also been firmly against co-promotion, a point which has been one of the driving factors in Emelianenko himself never fighting in the octagon. Rogan, however, admits that there is a way in which McGregor may be able to make the fight happen.

“If enough money gets thrown the UFC’s direction, the UFC might look at it this way, here’s a pragmatic way to look at it: ‘We can still make a lot of money with Conor McGregor. We can still make a lot of money with Conor McGregor in an MMA fight. We can still make a lot of money if Conor rematches Nate Diaz’ which I hear they’re trying to make happen as well, that’s what the rumor’s been. But is he gonna beat the best guys in the world now? After Nate Diaz boxed him up and choked him out, is that going to happen again? If that does happen again, how much will that deflate his value on the open market? If you’re playing a game of chess, not looking at it in terms of a guy’s career as an MMA fighter but looking at it as a game of financial chess, how do you move your piece?

“You might say, look the amount of money that you can make with the Mayweather fight is off the charts. Off the charts. You’re talking about a three million PPV buy or something crazy. So you do that, you move that up, you take that chance, and he gets boxed up by Mayweather and maybe he survives. If he survives and loses a fucking decision and he goes back and he says ‘All respect to Mayweather. Back to MMA. I just didn’t understand his hands. It’s a learning experience.’ and he has this great press conference. If he can survive, he’s not diminished too much. And Mayweather’s not a murderous puncher. He’s not a Canelo Alvarez or Gennady Golovkin. Golovkin is a bad fight for him. Someone like that is a bad fight for him, a murderous puncher, because most likely they’re gonna take him out. But Mayweather, it’s very possible he is gonna get to the decision.”

Setting aside the fact that such a fight would require a boxing commission to sign off on a match between one of the greatest boxers of …

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