Conor McGregor: Never has a defeat tasted as sweet

The sunglasses obscured the damage to his face and the Paisley suit looked immaculate but it was obvious this man was not long out of a fight.

Only an hour had passed since Floyd Mayweather surged through the gears in the 10th round of his much anticipated clash with Conor McGregor to force referee Robert Byrd to wave it off.

But time is money and the master salesman McGregor was in no mood to miss an opportunity to flog something.

“What’s up everybody?” he asked the assembled media as he arrived to conduct his press conference from the same ring he had just been beaten up in.

“Hello.”

He placed a half-empty bottle in front of him and added: “Let me just put my whiskey down. Notorious Irish Whiskey, coming soon.”

Gone was the snarling, obnoxious cartoon character from Los Angeles, New York, Toronto, London and Friday’s weigh-in. Instead, here stood a man who could not wipe the smile off his face.

A few slugs of his personalised liquor would have made a quick impact on his dehydrated body following 10 rounds of hard boxing.

No kicking, no choking, no wrestling, just boxing.

But really McGregor just looked truly happy – and for good reason. It is thought that he could take around $100m back to Dublin with him for his part in the fight that was. The zero-bout novice has cracked it.

Pure hard work and deep-rooted ‘obsession’, in his words, were the basis for his meteoric rise to superstardom in the Ultimate Fighting Championship.

But this contest, written off by some as a disgrace to boxing, was born of something entirely

different.

This was when opportunism met business in Las Vegas of all places, when the loudest mouth in combat sports turned the volume up so high that a retired boxer who is addicted to making money could hear him.

Once Mayweather was told by his tight circle of associates that he could give his bank balance a significant injection by fighting a man who had not boxed competitively since his teens was too much to resist.

Especially with a hefty bill from the Internal Revenue Service still reportedly outstanding.

But getting the deal over the line, agreeing terms with both fighters as well as the UFC, was one thing. Selling it was a different animal entirely.

But McGregor, with an ape and a tiger tattooed on his torso, looks like he could probably survive a stint in the jungle.

The sales pitch was almost unprecedented and the reaction was just as dramatic. Straight away, organisers began forecasting the potential to sell the pay-per-view broadcast to five million screens at $100 each.

As such, anyone with a modicum of sense wrote the fight off as nothing but a money-grab. A contest between a debutant and arguably the greatest boxer who ever lived should not be worth a penny and should not be sanctioned by the Nevada State Athletic Commission.

But, in this state at least, you can do just about anything if you’ve got the cash.

The commission even broke their own rules to allow the two combatants, who boxed at the 154lb light-middleweight limit, to wear 8oz gloves rather than the usual 10oz ones.

As most thought, the weight of their handwear mattered little in the end. Instead the fact that Mayweather is a highly successful boxer, and McGregor is not, was probably the significant factor here.

Although his senses were scrambled momentarily in the 10th when Byrd saved him from further punishment, it was nothing serious. He sees worse in his day job, when other men routinely try to choke him into unconsciousness.

Ask any of the 14,623 in attendance whether they’d let a five-weight world champion beat them up for the best part of €100 million and they’d ask you to pass them a gumshield.

McGregor is no different and he knew that defying boxing snobbery and facing Mayweather would bring him riches, the like of which will change the future of the McGregors for generations.

He’s hard not to admire. There are elements of Mayweather’s carefully curated persona about him but he connects with the average person in strange and impressive ways and they like nothing more than paying to see him.

Five minutes into his press conference, one journalist began to ask him a question but he was cut off midway through.

“Oh that whiskey tastes so good,” he cried. “Oh shit. Notorious Irish Whiskey. Coming soon.”

There is also a line of suits in the offing from his brand August x McGregor, the producers of the infamous outfit which included a pinstripe reading ‘fuck you’.

But whiskey, suits, whatever else, McGregor sells nothing better than violence.

“People ask me what’s next,” he added. “I’m not sure what’s next. I have multiple titles to defend in the UFC, I can also continue in the boxing game. The cheque in boxing was not bad. I’m going to raise the MMA cheques when I go back there.

“I’m open to hearing what UFC want. If they want me to come to boxing then we can talk. I’m certainly young.”

When the bruises fade and the hangover subsides, the master salesman will sit down and calculate exactly what the Mayweather circus was worth.

And you can bet your bottom dollar he will be raising a glass to being young, happy and rich.

The Fight: In Numbers

14,623 – the attendance in the arena.

5,377 – number of unsold seats.

3,360 – the number diamonds in the WBC ‘money belt’ they fought for.

1 – the number of alligators killed ot make the WBC ‘money belt’

2  – number of punches landed by Mayweather in round one.

26 – the percentage of McGregor’s 430 punches that landed.

70 – seconds gone in round 10 at time of stoppage.

6 – years since May - weather’s last stoppage win.

70m – estimated gate value (in euro)

106m – McGregor’s estimated earnings from fight (in euro)

335m – what Mayweather could earn (in euro)