A month on, the thought occasionally drifts across the front of our minds: Floyd Mayweather and Conor McGregor, remember that?
It was the fight that couldn't happen until it did, and after a couple of months of appalling build-up drench in hype and all manner of slurs and iniquities, McGregor performed admirably in the ring before gravity told. Mayweather has doddled off into retirement, while McGregor is back in the UFC.
But for a couple of brief months, the sports world completely lost their shit, with McGregor/Mayweather widely tipped to be the most lucrative fight in the history of the sport.
As it transpired, the gate receipts at the T-Mobile Arena were disappointing. In total, the fight raked in $55,414,865.79, well short of the $72,198,500 record set by Mayweather/Pacquaio in 2015. That gap could have been bridged but for the greed of the organisers, who preferred to leave more than 7,000 seats empty than flog them at a diminished price.
The Pay Per View sales also failed to match the heights of expectation. The record sits at the 4.6 million suckers who shelled out for Mayweather/Pacquiao, with last month's fight falling just short. According to a report by Boxing Scene, an official announcement will follow later this week confirming that the fight did 4.4 million sales. It's still a pretty remarkable sale, but given that it had been predicted that the fight could smash 5 million, it may be tinged with a slight bit of regret.
