It would have made more money if Mayweather fought Conor in MMA.
The only problem is that it wouldn't last longer than 60 seconds.
At least now we will see 5 or 6 rounds, if not more...
Good for both of them. I do think the event will bomb though.
How would it make more money in MMA? There has never been a UFC fight where a fighter made anything close to this kind of money. What is the highest UFC purse, like $3 million or something like that? Dana White said the biggest payday someone got in UFC was $5 million, but wouldn't disclose who that actually was (Lesner? McGregor?). That's undercard money in some boxing PPVs.
The way boxing can and usually is structured is the vast majority of the money goes to the actual main event fighters, and the rest is split by the cable/satellite distributors and a small percentage to the promoters (Mayweather vs Canelo for example did astronomical numbers, yet Golden Boy Promotions only made like $2.5m and that PPV sold 2.2m PPVs).
The only way it could be an MMA fight is under UFC and they just can't pay Floyd the kind of money he would require since the pay structure is completely different. So if you're thinking it would sell more PPVs as a UFC fight vs a boxing fight, even if that were true which is debatable, they wouldn't be able to pay him $75-$100+ million or whatever the crazy bare minimum required would be. I'm sure UFC/Dana White would never want to do that since the result would be a lot of fighters wanting a lot more percentage of PPVs which means less money going back into the company/sport.
Plus, this is what Conor wanted. He's said he wanted to box Floyd, challenged him and eventually got it. Conor was also an amateur boxer before getting into MMA so he at least has an amateur background. Floyd was never an amateur wrestler or anything else other than boxing since he was old enough to put on some gloves.