Khabib vs. Mayweather in a Boxing-MMA Hybrid Match?

Speaking at a press conference to hype his main event at UFC 249, the Russian briefly took his mind off his April 18 UFC opponent Tony Ferguson to address the Mayweather mega-fight possibility.

"If you want to make [the] fight, we can make [the] fight like this: 11 rounds… box, 1 round MMA," Khabib said. "If you make deal, we can fight…we have $100 million offer to fight him at middleweight. We have offer.

"I think Mayweather, he"s a very big name. He"s a very big name. Right now, I have big name too. We can fight. But we need like, 11 round box, 1 round MMA. Let"s go, I"m ready."

Mayweather, meanwhile, has recently gone on record as saying that there definitely is a UFC fight deal brewing between him and Dana White and that details are currently being hammered out between both sides.

"Like we talked about on social media, there’s two names right now," Mayweather said at a UK event. "We talked about the Conor McGregor fight, we talked about the Khabib fight.

"For myself, the number is $600 million. If I’m going to go out there and risk it, it’d have to be worth it.

"In the boxing world as of right now, it doesn’t make sense for me to fight any ordinary fighter. I’m a businessman. The Conor McGregor fight made sense. If it makes money, it makes sense.

"I don’t fight fighters or compete against competitors that only have cities behind them. If I’m going to fight you, you have to have a whole country behind you."

Mayweather’s 2017 10th round TKO of Conor McGregor in 2017 drew a lot of attention and was the second biggest money fight of all time, behind Mayweather vs. Manny Pacquiao two years prior. It’s only reasonable that some variation on this Mayweather vs. UFC concept would be revisited at some point.

This hybrid-style match proposed by Khabib would definitely be interesting. Essentially, Mayweather would have eleven rounds to put away Khabib, but, if he didn’t, he’d have to face him in an MMA-rules twelfth round that would obviously favor the UFC star best known for submitting McGregor in a 2018 UFC super fight.

However, as interesting as this sounds, the harsh reality that Mayweather-Khabib may not be possible is built into this concept. If Khabib is offering up this kind of idea, it probably means that he’s not fully onboard with an all-boxing bout against the former five-division world champ. And Mayweather probably won’t ever be onboard with anything other than an all-boxing bout against anyone.

Still, the idea is fun to consider and, yeah, it’s probably a fair enough compromise. Let’s see whether the potential money involved can push things together.

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