Irish Kryptonite and the Antitrust Time Bomb
How McGregor’s 'Money Fight' Blunted the UFC’s Biggest Legal Threat
Before the Mayweather Fight: The Smothering Grip of Monopoly
By the mid-2000s, after swallowing PRIDE and other rivals, the UFC had become the uncontested empire of MMA. That dominance gave it unilateral leverage. Fighters had nowhere else to go, and pay was suppressed at historic lows.
As The Guardian reported:
“As a result, fighters’ pay failed to reflect the growing popularity and profitability of the sport, leaving many athletes struggling to make ends meet. Unlike the vast majority of sports leagues and organizations, where athletes receive anywhere between 47% and 50% of revenue, the UFC has historically paid out between 16% and 19% of its revenues to fighters.”
Unsealed UFC records later confirmed fighter compensation hovered at 18.6% of revenue, well below MLS and even men’s tennis.
By 2014, fighters like Cung Le and Jon Fitch had had enough. They launched the Le vs. Zuffa antitrust lawsuit, accusing the UFC of monopolistic contracts, coercion, and wage suppression. The case, covering fights from 2010–2017, threatened billions in damages.
Enter the ‘Money Fight’: McGregor vs. Mayweather
Then came the Irish kryptonite.
In August 2017, Conor McGregor stepped outside the Octagon to fight Floyd Mayweather Jr. in boxing’s most lucrative spectacle.
• McGregor’s disclosed purse: $30 million, with total earnings estimated near $130 million.
• Mayweather’s take: $100 million guaranteed, ballooning close to $280 million.
The fight instantly became one of the highest-grossing PPVs in history. For McGregor, it was generational wealth. For the UFC, it was more than a payday… it was their legal insulation.
The Cost of UFC’s Calculated Permission
It’s important to note: the UFC didn’t simply let McGregor walk. They co-promoted the fight, with Dana White sitting ringside and the UFC logo splashed across the spectacle. They took a sizable cut of McGregor’s purse.
But, that co-promotion was the crucial detail: instead of blocking him outright, the UFC permitted their biggest star to cross over, on their terms.
Had the UFC refused? McGregor could have become the star witness for the plaintiffs: living proof of monopoly abuse, a fighter denied hundreds of millions by contractual shackles. That would have been nuclear in court.
By cutting themselves into the deal, the UFC gained both profit and cover. They could now argue: “See? We allowed our champion to box. We aren’t strangling opportunities.”
Yet, the permission carried a cost. On a recent appearance with Shannon Sharpe, Daniel Cormier explained how the Mayweather payday changed McGregor forever:
“Man, it’s over. That man is tripping. He made way too much, he went from plumbing to he sold that liquor for what $500 million? It’s too much. He got a $100 million for fighting Floyd. Then he was doing pay-per-views like nothing. He made too much money.”
Cormier noted that McGregor still craves the fame, but not the grind. The decision to let him chase that generational wealth insulated the UFC legally, but it also stripped away the hunger that once made him must-watch TV. In Cormier’s view, McGregor went from a fighter who could sell any card and back it up to a star who thrives more on headlines than on competition.
That paradox is the UFC’s bargain: permission bought them cover in court, but it may have cost them the very version of McGregor who made MMA explode into the mainstream.
The Road Not Taken: Paying Him What He Was Worth
There was another option on the table… one the UFC never entertained.
If the company had offered McGregor a purse comparable to the Mayweather fight to stay in-house and defend his belts, it would have blown up their wage-suppression model overnight. But it also could have safeguarded MMA’s legitimacy as the premier combat sport.
Instead, by refusing to break their pay structure, the UFC effectively nudged its biggest star toward boxing. That single decision handed McGregor generational wealth while undermining the UFC’s own claim to being the pinnacle of combat. As one of my colleagues put it, that was the moment decades of work (since 1993) building MMA into the dominant combat sport, was thrown away.
Legal Fallout: Billions at Stake
The lawsuits didn’t vanish; they grew sharper.
2023: Fighters secured class-action status in Le vs. Zuffa, covering 2010–2017, with damages projected between $800 million and $1.6 billion (Guardian).
March 2024: UFC attempted to settle for $335 million, which was rejected by a judge.
2025: A revised $375 million settlement was approved, with roughly $240–260 million earmarked for distribution to fighters. Spread across thousands of claimants, the actual per-fighter payouts will be modest.
Meanwhile, the Johnson vs. Zuffa case, covering 2017 to present, still looms.
The chorus of veteran criticism only grew louder. Demetrious Johnson noted the absurd gap between UFC and WWE pay, pointing out that even lower-tier WWE wrestlers earned $200K while UFC fighters often scraped by on $12.5K per bout (TalkSport).
And UFC veteran Matt Brown, reacting to the company’s new $7.7 billion US media rights deal, told MMA Fighting:
“If history tells us anything, this is not going to change anything for fighters. They don’t have to pay fighters more. They do not. I promise you that. They will get away with it.”
Even Gray Maynard, one of the lawsuit’s central plaintiffs, stressed that “there’s still a lot of work to be done,” pointing to the fact that he was once locked into a $42,000-per-fight deal that forced him to work construction jobs during fight week.
Ultima Sententia
McGregor was the Irish kryptonite that could have detonated the UFC’s monopoly argument. Instead, his boxing crossover with Mayweather became the shield that blunted it.
By co-promoting the “Money Fight,” the UFC cashed in while neutralizing the risk that their biggest star might side, even accidentally or inadvertently, with the plaintiffs.
The irony is brutal: the man who made the most money may have entrenched the system that ensures nobody else ever will.
“There is a tide in the affairs of men, which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune; omitted, all the voyage of their life is bound in shallows and in miseries.”
— William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar
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Blake Avignon is the pseudonym of a strategist and media executive who has worked across the UFC, F1, MLB, NBA, and NFL: building brands, brokering partnerships, and reshaping the future of sports and entertainment from the inside.