Conor McGregor's next opponent: The UFC
NEW YORK – During one of the preliminary bouts of UFC 205 on Saturday at Madison Square Garden, Ari Emanuel, now the boss at the Ultimate Fighting Championship, took a stroll around the Octagon, surveying his new business and new toy.
He serves as co-CEO of William Morris Endeavor, the Hollywood media and entertainment agency, and he spearheaded the recent $4.2 billion acquisition of the UFC. This was a grand night for such a walk, an electric midtown Manhattan atmosphere with the company on pace for a record-smashing night. The stands were filled with the rich and famous. Back at Emanuel’s seat, New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft, for instance, was waiting to talk.
A night like this is why you buy the UFC, to own the incredible cocktail that a big fight night brings. By the end of it, Emanuel would find himself in the middle of the biggest fight of all, though, courtesy of Conor McGregor, his star employee whose relentlessness in the cage is exceeded only by his relentlessness outside of it.
McGregor played an oversized role in making this a night out of the UFC’s wildest dreams, and that was before he knocked out lightweight champion Eddie Alvarez in the main event. His presence and promotion delivered, according to president Dana White, records not only for pay-per-views (over 1.7 million) but live gate ($17.7 million) here at the Garden.
“Jesus is going to have to fight the devil to break that record,” White said.
McGregor is the UFC’s Jesus. And its devil. And after becoming the first fighter to become champion of two weight classes – he added a lightweight title to his featherweight crown – he’s fixing for a contract that could turn the entire industry on its ear.
First, though, he made a quick announcement.
“I’m going to be a daddy next year,” said McGregor, noting it has even further hardened his resolve for the business side of the fight game. He wasn’t all that sure about the details though, like a due date for instance.
“March, I think,” McGregor said, before someone from his team told him that wasn’t correct. “May? It’s not May is it? I thought it was March. What the [expletive]? I am running from it to be honest. I’m crapping my jocks. I don’t know what to do with myself. I don’t know nothing. I’ll figure that out when it happens.”
And then he delivered a message for Emanuel.
“They have to come talk to me now,” McGregor said. “No one has come talk to me since the sale has happened. As a businessman … I’ve earned something. I mean, who owns the company now? People have shares of the company. Celebrities. Conan O’Brien owns the UFC nowadays.
“Where’s my shares? Where’s my equity?” McGregor continued. “If I am the one who is bringing this in, they’ve got to come talk to me, that’s what I know. I have both belts, a chunk of money, a little family on the way … they want to keep me in the Octagon now, I want equity, I want equal share, I want what I deserve, what I’ve earned.”
Emanuel is known for his shrewd deals and tough negotiating. McGregor is known for taking fights, often against conventional wisdom, that he believes he can win and then delivering.
As recently as 2011, he was a low-level fighter living off the Irish dole. Saturday he was the King of New York, demanding post-fight that the UFC drape both belts over his shoulders in an effort to create grandiose images for newspapers and magazines around the globe, the kind of stuff that makes him even more famous. The company wasn’t prepared and had to borrow welterweight champion Tyron Woodley’s belt for the photo-op. Woodley didn’t even mind.
“The vast majority of the fans are here to see Conor,” Woodley said. “I’m a professional.”
The vast majority fans were here to see Conor. It’s why tickets hit $2,000 on the secondary market. It was the same as the customers at home – on multiple continents – despite this being a mismatch. McGregor has strategically put himself in the middle of everything – in the last 11 months, he’s won the championship of two weight classes and fought two previous record pay-per-view fights at a third (170 pounds).
He stirs the drink. If he goes on hiatus to raise his child for a bit, the UFC suffers. Ronda Rousey is set to return in late December, but no one knows how much longer she’ll be around, especially if she were to lose. After that there is nothing and no one close. There is always a strong base of a few hundred thousand, perhaps a half a million mixed martial arts fans who will buy every pay-per-view. They aren’t what bring the mega-bucks though. For instance, does the promotion really want to come back to New York, for UFC 209 in Brooklyn in February, without McGregor?
“This is some place, New York,” McGregor marveled.
Pay for the sport’s top stars has been an issue with the UFC from the beginning. Even when the company was losing money, White and the previous owners had to battle the fighters seeking more, including holdouts and retirements. This is a whole different era and whatever McGregor can and cannot accomplish will have far-reaching implications.
“This is a multi-billion company,” McGregor said. “ … Whoever owns this whole [expletive] needs to come to me and give me my slice because that’s what I’ve earned. I’ve earned all of this.”
At first glance an equity share for a fighter is problematic. Sure, maybe McGregor is worth it, but then isn’t Rousey also? And does, say, a Jon Jones get a smaller share? Besides, if the company is going to exist in perpetuity, there will always be a few top draws who drive the numbers. If they always get a share also, then how long until you run out of shares?
Plus, when you just bought something for over $4 billion, do you want to divvy out even small portions of ownership? McGregor already makes millions every time he fights, but, as he notes, that falls far behind major boxing stars.
All he knows is it’s time to talk. He’s got the power. He’s got the family responsibility coming. He’s got a good reason to take a sabbatical – whether it’s in March or May.
“They would be happy if I continue doing what I am doing,” McGregor said. “Now it’s time for the real contract. I’m the highest paid already but … [if] you want me to be around and help service that debt and continue to push the company, bring me on board for real … I need to be set for life with this. If you want me to be truly in on this, then I need to be in on this as owner, an equity stake in the company, so that is what I am looking for.”
As recently as a year ago, McGregor would tell anyone who would listen how he was going to win the featherweight title and then the lightweight title and in the process become the biggest and richest star the sport had ever known. Few thought it was possible. White, the UFC president, said he was opposed on principle for one guy to control two weight divisions.
McGregor took care of that in short order.
So you want him showing up in February in Brooklyn for another record gate, another record pay-per-view, with either a third fight against Nate Diaz or a dangerous lightweight defense against Khabib Nurmagomedov, or even a seemingly suicidal jump up to welterweight to take on the mammoth Woodley for a belt he just borrowed? Or do you want to risk it with someone else?
All Conor McGregor knows is that his plan to push the UFC into a corner is complete. Now it’s time for Ari Emanuel, basking in such a brilliant night, to step up for his own fight – a fight, like all fights, that Conor McGregor has no intention of losing.
