
Floyd Mayweather Jr. tossed $1 bills in Conor McGregor’s face. McGregor waved Jay Z’s new CD in Mayweather’s direction and quoted a Biggie Smalls lyric as some sort of warning shot.
The rest?
The fashionably late fighters treated fans that waited hours for the latest stop in a promotional tour to about 30 minutes of profanities, crude cracks about body parts, and, well, a steady stream of even more fbombs.
If Mayweather and McGregor turned their latest showdown into a true PPV — pay-per-vulgarity — they’d collect a few million bucks before they even hit the ring for their Aug. 26 fight.
All this commotion — a DJ and rapper Doug E. Fresh warmed up the crowd of 13,165 — for a press conference.
“If it even is a press conference,” McGregor cracked. “It’s a bit of a roasting.”
McGregor, who turns 29 on Friday, was the picture of cool as he walked the red carpet inside Barclays Center. The UFC star wore floral pants, sunglasses and ditched a shirt for a polar bear mink coat he bought earlier in the day in a Fifth Avenue shopping spree.
Scratch that gift from the wish list.
He could afford the outlandish outfit. McGregor and Mayweather will earn perhaps nine-figure paydays while fight fans will be charged $100 to watch on TV in high def and can’t get into the arena for anything less than a $500 face-value ticket —if they’re lucky.
But in New York, where a “Hamilton” seat can cost you a rent check, there’s still a deal to be found — even in the fight game.
The fight angling to become the richest in sports history is offering fans a bargain-basement price for this weeklong smack-talking circus: Free. It’s the cleanest four-letter word uttered by the Irish sensation McGregor and the undefeated boxer Mayweather during a foul-mouthed promotional tour that stopped Thursday in New York. They had made stops in Los Angeles and Toronto.
“When I wake up in the morning, I forget that I’m famous,” the 40-year-old Mayweather said.
He got a reminder in Brooklyn.
Fans lined outside the home of the Brooklyn Nets hours before they were allowed inside the arena. They flocked in TMT gear or draped themselves in Irish flags as they waited for the pair to start trading insults weeks before they exchange blows.
Jon McFaul, 28 of South Jersey, ordered his ticket online not long after they were made available to the public. McFaul and his friends showed up at noon for their shot at being among the first through the doors.
McFaul, a McGregor fan, said he’ll watch the fight with friends to split the $99.95 bill for the high-definition pay-per-view.
“You’re bringing the best of two worlds together,” he said.
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