Conor McGregor might be counting the cost of a first defeat in the UFC but the reported seven figure earnings from the fight will cushion the blow somewhat.
But in comparison to boxing, Irish sports journalist Ewan MacKenna believes it is nowhere near the same ballpark as boxing in that financial regard.
Joining George Hook on today's Right Hook, Ewan said: "If you want to compare it to boxing - and I'm not comparing him to Floyd Mayweather - but Floyd Mayweather for his last fight made $230 million. McGregor was getting half a million dollars plus money from pay-per-view packages and the UFC is quite strange like that. There's a problem with the UFC in that it's self-regulating. [It's] run by a couple of extremely wealthy businessmen, people like Dana White and Lorenzo Fertita. They run the whole thing and they make massive, massive money out of it and they don't pay their fighters particularly well. The 2012 survey showed 15% of fighters made under $10,000 a year and 50% made between $10,000 and $99,000 a year - and that's gross."
Nate Diaz in action against Conor McGregor ©INPHO/Raymond Spencer
As for McGregor's decision to jump two weight classes to fight Diaz, Ewan feels it was down to "ego".
"But it was the ego of McGregor which has been fuelled by himself, the UFC and Irish media [which] made him think that he could do that and that was a huge reason behind it," he said, adding that the aura of invincibility has gone now and "the UFC has a habit of chewing up and spitting out fighters once they maximise their profits out of them".
Ewan reckons the sport and UFC promotion has been "well marketed" and sees "McGregor as the perfect example of hype and hysteria over the actual reality of his ability".
Ewan believes McGregor to be a "good fighter" but that there is a "rush in modern society to proclaim someone as great very quickly".
"Two reasons I think he became very big: No 1, it suited the UFC's agenda to have this loudmouth everywhere because it sold pay-per-view packages and No 2, the Irish media suited in a big way. He was a hashtag movement, he was clickbait," he said.
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