Overview

Floyd Mayweather vs. Conor McGregor, also known as The Money Fight, was a highly publicized professional boxing match between Floyd Mayweather Jr., retired American professional boxer and the undefeated five-division world champion, and Conor McGregor, Irish professional mixed martial artist and current UFC Lightweight champion, that took place in Paradise, Nevada on August 26th, 2017.

Background

On May 18th, 2017, McGregor reportedly signed a contract agreeing to terms put forth by Mayweather to hold a professional boxing match between the two athletes. On June 14th, Mayweather posted a tweet announcing that the fight was officially scheduled (shown below).

The fight is scheduled to be held at the T-Mobile Arena is Paradise, Nevada and will be broadcast via Showtime pay-per-view. According to estimates by Keith Idec of BoxingScene.com,^[4] Mayweather is expected to collect at least $100 million and McGregor is expected to make $75 million from the match.

Developments

Online Reaction

On June 18th, Redditor WhatCanCrewDoForYou submitted a post titled "High-tech simulation of Mayweather v McGregor," featuring a picture of Spongebob Squarepants and Eugene Krabs laying in a pile of money (shown below). Within six weeks, the post gained over 38,100 points (92% upvoted) and 330 comments on /r/BikiniBottomTwitter.^[5]

That same day, posts featuring a computer animated GIF of a Mayweather running from McGregor around a boxing ring before suddenly knocking McGregor out reached the front page of /r/mma^[6] and /r/gaming^[7] (shown below).

On July 15th, 2017, YouTuber Zac Alsop uploaded footage of himself sneaking into a live McGregor vs. Mayweather press conference in London, England (shown below). Within two weeks, the video accumulated upwards of 1.05 million views and 1,800 comments.

Fight Night

On August 26th, 2017, the fight took place at the T-Mobile Arena in Paradise Nevada. Several television providers and the UFV.tv website experienced various technical issues due to the high demand of the event, which delayed the start time of the match by one hour. That evening, Redditor mykalmoto submitted a post saying "Glad I paid $99 for PPV on UFC.tv" along with a screenshot of an error message announcing "overwhelming volume of requests" (shown below).^[8]

After 10 rounds, Mayweather defeated McGregor by TKO. That night, image macros about the event hit the frontpage of various meme-related subreddits, including /r/dankmemes and /r/memeeconomy.

Related Memes

Conor McGregor's Suit

On July 11th, 2017, the @bokamotoespn^[1] Instagram page posted a photograph of McGregor wearing a navy blue suit with the words "fuck you" written as pinstripes during a press tour for the upcoming fight (shown below). Within two weeks, the post gathered upwards of 1,900 likes.

On July 14th, Redditor mnbeerfan2k16 submitted an edited version of the picture replacing "fuck you" with "Falcons blew a 28-3 lead" to /r/Patriots^[3] (shown below, left).The following day, the Shitheadsteve Facebook^[2] page posted the picture with "9/11 was an inside job" written on the pinstripes (shown below, right).

Search Interest

External References