Conor McGregor is comfortably ahead of Floyd Mayweather in one important category: hype
The amount of money that a boxer can make is driven by one thing more than any other in today's climate: hype.
Whether you're salivating or cursing at the prospect, there's no denying that Conor McGregor's fight with Floyd Mayweather has generated enough interest to make it the sporting spectacle of 2017.
Google searches have surged in anticipation of a bout that up to five million people from across the globe will watch on pay per view, making it bigger than Mayweather vs Pacquiao (which achieved 4.4m).
While the exact amount of money McGregor and Mayweather will make from their bout is unknown, they will make increasing amounts of it if they get big TV audiences.
That Floyd Mayweather would deign to step into the ring with McGregor at all is a sign of how far MMA, and Conor McGregor in particular, has come over the past few years in terms of profile.
Google Trends data shows that search interest in McGregor is higher in 2017 so far than it is for Mayweather in all but 12 countries for which there is data available.
Mayweather isn't even safe in his own backyard of America where interest in Conor McGregor has built up a head of steam over the past two years, surging ahead of interest in Mayweather even after the American came out of retirement.
This makes McGregor unique for a professional fighter in terms of the amount of hype he can drum up, magnified by the fact he appeals to a slightly different audience.
Interest in the fight peaked last month during the two fighters' press conference tour which took in LA, Toronto, New York and London in the space of just a few days.
In this sense it did its job. An exhibition of the worst kind of posturing it may have been - Mayweather accused McGregor of racism and used a homophobic slur in the space of a few seconds in London - but it is very likely to have increased the PPV numbers for the fight.
In poor taste? Yes, but Mayweather vs McGregor will prove to be a great success in one of the measures that the two competitors care most about: money.
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