Conor McGregor faced Floyd Mayweather Jr. in a crossover boxing match back in 2017. The mega-fight turned out to be a roaring success with reportedly 4.3 million PPV sales, as well as making eye-watering purses for both fighters. ‘Money Mayweather’, already the highest-paid boxer at that time, reportedly made over $100 million, while McGregor pocketed over $80 million. Or so people think. But verbose UFC analyst and former superstar Chael Sonnen believes these numbers are just a lie.

He joined former champion and commentator Daniel Cormier to discuss UFC bantamweight champion Sean O’Malley wanting to fight boxing superstar Ryan Garcia in a boxing match. During the interaction at ESPN MMA, Sonnen revealed, “We never see these crossovers the only time this has ever happened is Mayweather versus McGregor. And I have personally never lived through anything where the truth was mis-told more than that fight. Those guys did not make the money they pretended to, it did not do the pay-per-views they pretended to. They begged to do a rematch and the benefactor writing the check absolutely was not going to do it again.”

Further, the UFC analyst felt that mixed martial artists crossing over to box professionals was not a good idea, having flopped every time it has been tried. He gave the example of the recent Francis Ngannou vs. Tyson Fury bout as another failed crossover event. “And I only tell you that it’s not like this is a great idea. We tried to do it with Tyson Fury and Francis Ngannou, it bombed, everybody got crushed on it. I don’t know why are we keep going back to this concept if Garcia and O’Malley want to fight I would watch it for sure but what would they be fighting for?” he added.

While Sonnen’s analysis is sharp as ever, one of his claims has been subject to criticism from fans and analysts alike.

Were Fury-Ngannou and Floyd Mayweather Jr. vs. Conor McGregor failures?

While the PPV sales were underwhelming for the Francis Ngannou vs. Tyson Fury bout, Ngannou made a minimum of $10 million (plus his share of the PPV revenue). Not to mention the (temporary) prestige the fighter got because of almost defeating the world heavyweight boxing champion on his boxing debut! Until, of course, he got humiliated by Anthony Joshua earlier this year and lost all of that prestige.

So, if Sonnen’s argument was purely that the bout was not a success in terms of PPV buys, few would argue with that. However, since the fight, ‘Uncle Chael’ has claimed that Francis Ngannou “fumbled the bag” by leaving the UFC and choosing to fight Fury. The argument he has put forth is that although ‘The Predator’ got paid more than ten times his last UFC purse for one boxing match against Fury, he missed out on making even more money in the UFC since he could have cumulatively made more money by fighting two or three times (including with Jon Jones) in the time between his last UFC fight and the Fury boxing match if he had stayed at the Las Vegas-based promotion.

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Ngannou (who was then the UFC heavyweight champion) exited the UFC in January 2023 after disagreements over various issues like fighter pay, medical insurance, and personal sponsorships with the Dana White-led promotion. Notably, the Cameroonian had a knee injury that took him almost a year to heal from. Therefore, even if Ngannou had wanted to fight multiple times in 2023, he could not have done that because of his injury.

Crucially, Ngannou reportedly made only $600,000 in his last UFC fight against Ciryl Gane in January last year. Sonnen claimed that if Ngannou had fought Jon Jones, plus his other fights, he could have made enough to cover for the difference between his UFC purses and the Fury fight purse. That, purely mathematically, seems very unlikely, since the numbers that Ngannou-Jones would have had to do would be far more than any UFC event to date. All things considered, Fury-Ngannou seems to have been a success for Ngannou personally, even if the PPV sales were not anything to write home about.

However, as far as the Mayweather-McGregor bout is concerned, since the UFC was involved in co-promoting the bout, it does indicate that the West Lynn native’s claims may have some veracity to them. After all, even the reporting on the numbers that the crossover super fight did was based on second-hand information. Until the receipts drop, it is almost impossible to say whether the 4.3 million PPV sales numbers are true.