The Mayweather McGregor prize purse

Sometimes the hours draaaaag on when you’re stuck in an office, fielding emails, phone calls and meeting requests from employees and stakeholders who urgently require your attention for vital issues and concerns. Wouldn’t it be nice to make money some other way – one that keeps you fit, lets you talk smack about your rivals to an international audience and wear swearword-laced suits without worrying about what HR thinks? 

Let’s rub this lamp, summon a genie and put a contract in front of you. $75 million, and all you have to do is have the bejeesus thumped out of you by Floyd Mayweather while the world’s biggest pay-per-view audience watches in shaken awe at his surgical dismantling of what was once a human being, but is now a quivering lump of blood, bruise and saliva-webbed mouthguard.

One rule: you can’t take a dive in the first, according to the seedy-looking bloke in pinstripes picking his teeth in the corner of the room – not if you value those pretty kneecaps of yours. Would you do it? And would you feel like backing out after the world’s most accurate puncher gives you a wink at the weigh-in, or would you steel yourself for the oncoming onslaught?

It’s a stupid amount of money to get beaten up for, as any nerdy kid looking for his broken glasses behind the bike sheds will tell you. Even our highest-paid CEO – Macquarie Bank’s Nicholas Moore – could take four or five years off after a few minutes flailing away in gloves before ‘Money’ put him out of his misery with a showy check hook to please the punters who were threatening to turn sour at his habit of dodging the greats, fighting them past their prime or setting up stunt matches against match-unfit financial CEOs.

Even our highest-paid CEO – Macquarie Bank’s Nicholas Moore – could take four or five years off after a few minutes flailing away in gloves before ‘Money’ put him out of his misery with a showy check hook.

Of course, that pay packet isn’t just for the time spent on the mat, desperately looking for a towel to throw in. Your compensation also covers nonstop training, dietitian-enforced clean eating, promotional appearances and looking menacing in magazine shoots.

McGregor’s probably not spending much of his August down the pub with mates or kicking back with a few rounds of Splatoon 2. But that’s only in the lead-up to the bout, right? After one night of death or glory, you’re free to get LaMotta-fat and start working on that memoir.

Oh, and you get to fight back, too, against the former Pretty Boy that everyone would love to see knocked down by a fresh-faced novice with minimal boxing experience. Imagine if you went the distance with Mayweather? Or managed to land one on his chin? Imagine if someone handed you those broken glasses, and it turned out to be Superman and he wanted to be your friend and beat up all the bullies?

Ooohhhhh…we rubbed the lamp too hard.