Mayweather/McGregor showdown could happen in August

If you’ve been hotly anticipating the much-discussed boxing match between Floyd Mayweather and Conor McGregor, you might not want to make any plans for August 26. According to ESPN’s Dan Rafael, Mayweather’s camp is going to send that date to the Nevada State Athletic Commission for approval.

The commission originally was scheduled to take up the request on Wednesday, but that item has been removed from the agenda, probably because there’s isn’t yet an official deal between Mayweather Promotions and Showtime, which would air the pay-per-view welterweight bout. But Rafael says the date request would be a mere formality whenever the PPV deal is struck. The fight would take place at the new T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas.

Last month, the UFC lightweight champion McGregor announced that he had signed a “record breaking deal” to fight Mayweather in a boxing match after nearly two years’ worth of talk about it. Mayweather has not stepped into the ring since September 2015, when he beat Andre Berto to retain his world welterweight title.

The sheer novelty of the proposed bout — with a UFC champion who’s never trained strictly as a boxer going up against an undefeated legend of the ring — could push the prize money into absurd territory, with MMA President Dana White speculating that Mayweather could get at least $100 million from the fight and McGregor $75 million.

Rafael reports that Mayweather and McGregor originally wanted the fight to take place September 16, but were beaten to the punch, so to speak, by Golden Boy Promotions and K2 Promotions, who will hold the much-anticipated middleweight title bout between Canelo Alvarez and Gennady Golovkin on that date, also at T-Mobile Arena.

As part of that deal with MGM Resorts International — the parent company of T-Mobile Arena — any Mayweather-McGregor fight could not take place within three weeks of Alvarez-Golovkin, and August 26 is exactly three weeks before September 16. (Washington Post)