Now that the fight is over (Floyd won as expected and we made $$$), we think it is the perfect time to highlight all of the chaos that occurred leading up to the fight. A lot of the items will be controversial and several will be obvious for those with a background in sales/business/sports. The most important part? If the presidency and the fight didn’t prove that people are driven 100% by emotion nothing will (notice we don’t talk about politics anymore because there isn’t money to be made!). Lets jump in!
Business Lessons
Brand Damage: We’re starting with the most obvious one. We got several messages and read a ton of websites that suggested “Floyd Mayweather is incentivized to throw the Fight”. Immediately, our response was the same: “Ask us how we know you’ve never run a meaningful business?” The message is clear and to the point: Brand Damage. If Floyd were to throw the fight he would lose significantly more money by killing all of his boxing revenue: the gym, the TMT store, all endorsements and of course his image as The Best Ever. The funniest part of the entire debate is that people believe Floyd is all about the money… then decide he would throw the fight. That doesn’t make any sense at all because he would lose somewhere around $1 billion over the course of his life by throwing the fight.
Consumers Always Take The Bait: We saw our media version of cloaking with the fraud video of McGregor “Ko’ing” Paulie Malignaggi in a sparring session. The media stunt worked with the spread on Mayweather falling from -700 to -400 or so (some places went as low as the 300-350 range) which is absurd. Broadly speaking, people want to believe in the underdog so they fell for the bait and took the entire story hook, line and sinker. If there is one thing that won’t change? Average guy always believes in the underdog because he is a reminder of himself… a guy who never had a shot in the first place.
The second part of taking the bait is the real *entertainment* opportunity that has now opened up. The real move here is for a fight between Paulie Malignaggi and Conor McGregor. Since they now have a clean beef with fake footage and outrage from Paulie, your average consumer would pay for the fight. That said, since the “jig is up”, we doubt the fight would happen since the above average person would know that Conor would lose again (not to mention the significant brand damage for Conor McGregor after another loss). The entertainment value gives it a chance though. While we give it a 0.1% chance of ever happening, if Conor needs money he can always go down this route to make a few million. End of the day… Too much brand damage now that he has his own athletic business. But. It would work for entertainment dollars.
Marketing is King – Three Steps: The media has done a great job of portraying Floyd Mayweather as a typical boxer who has financial problems. They went so far as to say he owes a ton of money to the IRS even though 30 minutes of research would reveal that he locked in a different investment vehicle to capitalize on a higher return on investment. This was an important step in the marketing process because it gave Conor some fodder for the pre-fight conferences. It also caused people to look into Mayweather and learn about him (the MMA fans that is) and gave them yet another reason to hate him (anyone remember what people said about Donald Trump’s taxes for the entire election cycle?)
The second step was Mayweather. He had to find a way to make it seem like Conor had a chance (practically no shot, we had 1:20 due to a DQ or something strange like breaking his own hand). So he went into repetitive talking mode, similar to a sales pitch, stating on paper Conor has a shot… “He’s a lot younger. When you look at myself and Conor McGregor on paper, he’s taller, has a longer reach, he’s a bigger man from top to bottom. He’s a lot younger, so youth is on his side… And I’ve been off a couple of years. And I’m in my 40s. So, if you look at everything on paper, it leans toward Conor McGregor.” – Floyd Mayweather. After this… He continued to thank the MMA side for putting the fight together and acted as polite as possible… until the end when he guaranteed the fight wouldn’t go the distance during the weigh in… this is marketing 101! He never said he would lose, he just gives people a reason to show up to the fight. If people think Conor has a chance that means more PPV buys, more people in seats and more money for him.
The third step was covered above. You had video of Conor doing well combined with Mayweather saying he was inactive making it possible to get hit during his own training regimen. Combine those two items and the masses believe in some dude with a chest tattoo. Watching all of this unfold was beyond brilliant.
The fourth and final step was hyping the fight up as a brutal one (this took the entire duration of the hype phase to work). Mayweather went on to say he would “go to Conor” which was just code for fighting in the pocket and throwing consistent lead punches… killing any sliver of hope that Conor had. Both fighters said the bout would not go the distance. Conor stated it would last 4 rounds and Mayweather guaranteed on Jimmy Kimmel live that it would not go 12 rounds. This resulted in a perfect set up since most people don’t want to see a round 1 KO and they don’t want to see a 12 round boring fight. For some reason, the general population (regulars) want to see something in-between, which is what they were essentially communicating.
Will This Be Good For Sports? This will be interesting. Our guess is that this will be a positive for both boxing and MMA because it is a form of cross pollination. If you ran a website that sold yoga pants and expanded into other sporting wear for women… There would be a good chance it worked but not a guarantee. This is similar as you have two types of combat sports combining for a day to see if they can get more dollars out of each pocket (MMA fans spending to watch boxing in the future and vice versa). The second part that makes it interesting is that Mayweather is forty years old. If Mayweather fought at age thirty… The fight would have lasted 1 round at maximum. The timing is actually quite good so we think it’ll end up being a good long-term decision. Conor doesn’t look terrible losing to an older guy and Mayweather didn’t have to KO him in a single round so it looks more reasonable than it actually was. Perception is reality and they did a good job making this fight seem legit.
Controversial Lessons
We’re going to make a lot of people mad with this section but we’ll go ahead and do it anyway. There are a lot of controversial topics here and some of them are definitely painful. Ranging from racism (still exists today) to people being taken advantage of. Nothing you can do about so no need to worry about it but here we go…
Who Bet on Conor? We’re not overly cynical here so we think the vast majority of people don’t know anything about sports which is fine. Your average guy who thinks that Conor had a chance is simply a regular or a fool. They have no actual fitness experience and might look decent since they went to the gym… But they are simply not athletic. They are the same people who believe that “elite” training is about periodization and peaking at the right time. That level of knowledge is given to 14 year olds who competed at the high school level. To emphasize this, the vast majority 98% of people, are not athletic or knowledgeable about the top 2% in any shape or form. So we’ll say that 98% of the people who bet on Conor just don’t know anything about sports (nothing negative to say) just “smile, nod and agree”
The second group of people are the emotionally attached. We have nothing bad to say about MMA, Conor is a top athlete in his specific sport… that said… It’s not the same as boxing. The hardcore *MMA* fans and the hardcore *Ireland* fans voted heavily on Conor. These guys were simply blinded by emotion. Nothing negative here, it is simply human emotion: 1) dedicated MMA fans and 2) patriotic Irish citizens. The good news is that you should look for these people in the future. If you see another lop sided bet like we had here, you can find these people and make wagers against them in your favor. When people are emotionally attached you should hear the cash register ringing in your head.
The third group represents the scum of the earth. Actual racists. You can spot these guys because they had to show their cards. Look for people who 1) claim to be athletic experts and 2) somehow thought McGregor would win. This is the ugly side of the chaos that ensued over the last couple of months. They cannot hold both beliefs together at the same time. One of them must be false. We’re going to be careful and make sure that spotting is done correctly: Step 1: before claiming the person is racist, make sure you check their financial incentives. A ton of the guys who said he had a chance are making money off of the fight so they are doing it to get more people to watch the fight (ESPN is an example, more controversy = more viewers so someone has to take the other side). This is the vast majority. Step 2: if they make nothing from the fight, you’ll have to do your own research to see if the person is an actual expert in sports or not and finally Step 3: if they are experts and don’t make money from it… make sure there is no emotional attachment: huge MMA fan, Irish, involved specifically with McGregor etc. After checking all three boxes… chances are you’ve met an actual racist. An extremely small portion of the population, but you now have a clean way to see if someone is an actual scumbag.
Drugs in Sports: Now that we’re seeing more and more athletes get busted for drugs it’s time to let the cat out the bag. Any smart athlete in the top 0.1% is on drugs of some kind and it would be foolish to avoid them. Sure they are not on millions of dollars of drugs 24/7… But. They are using drugs. How else do these athletes come back in under 6 months from serious injuries such as torn ACLs? The answer is drugs. Besides, with $100M+ on the line what intelligent person wouldn’t max out all of the rules he could? Even with blood tests, there are still many ways to get your body to near maximum numbers without tripping the alarms…. To kill the last shred of hope that pro-athletes are “clean” just ask yourself an honest question. If you were borderline professional, the difference between say $1M a year in salary or $60K a year in a development league… Would you look into how the tests are done and maximize your chances? We can all be realistic when it comes to the real answer.
All that said, it would be wise to legalize them to some extent. It’s a bit of a predicament because going overboard on drugs results in death and on the other side, low doses result in improved recovery time (injuries) and performance. There is no magic drug to make someone athletic anyway. Even if someone had talent (top 5%), with drugs they would not beat someone who is in the 0.1%. It’s just not going to be enough. The rules should be given some more wiggle room. Find out if HGH should be legal for injury recovery. Look into the numbers needed for max performance and make that the cut off. This way, everyone is using the same exact amount since overdosing isn’t beneficial (it would actually lower performance long-term). In the future, we wouldn’t be surprised if the rules change… It is just far too complicated since encouraging drug use could also lead to severe issues (young athletes using them and killing themselves as well)… At the end of the day, we’d say some sort of NDA agreement for all pro-athletes and those about to go pro would work. The leagues could then allow low doses, making everything clean and younger athletes wouldn’t know the truth unless they made it to the big leagues in the first place.
Anything for the Money: Now that it is crystal clear that the entire event was just a spectacle… Everyone knows the truth about the power of marketing. They hit a sweet spot where they capitalized on the masses. Your average guy isn’t an expert in anything so illogical things such as “boxing gloves make it impossible for a TKO/KO for Mayweather” made sense to them. In fact, you probably heard such arguments leading up to the fight. The only reason they lowered the weights for the gloves? You guessed it… Marketing (made the fight *seem* more brutal).
The nasty part is the lengths at which they were willing to go (we got the round off by one but oh well – Mayweather had to make it look close to merge the two businesses). They embarrassed Paulie Malignaggi for the money (he should have known better since Conor knew he had no chance as well – went so far as to say he wouldn’t even bet on himself). They took your average consumer for a ride with huge mark ups in Vegas. And. They also cashed in an ungodly amount of promotions. While the fight hype and set up wasn’t all that bad, the darker side should immediately come into question. If a large fight with a ton of built in demand still went through all of these hoops… would a poor person be willing to give you fake information on the internet? Would that same person be willing to sell bunk products at 100% mark ups? Would they sell re-packaged junk and say it’s a new innovation? For those that have read Efficiency they know the answer and how to spot it.
Get Ready for the Hate: As we described in a prior post, the average person roots against the favorite 99/100 times. This was no different. Mayweather has been the heel for years and that naturally means… He’s the best. The real underlying point is to avoid fame. People who want to be famous and successful will end up receiving death threats, tons of negative attention and forced to live a life “on guard” at all time. While there is nothing to be afraid of, getting rich first then deciding if you actually want fame is a much better set up for the future. The more recognizable you are the more hate you’ll get. You’ll also find that you have a lot more “friends” who ask you if you need “help” with anything. All of this is just code for ways to get money (angling). Even if you are relatively unknown and rich, a small number of people will leak information which just makes you a target in the future.
With that we’ll leave you with our favorite tweet during the fight. And. As you can see, this entire post was written before the fight even began (hence the time post immediately after the win).
On a final note… if you’re interested in learning more about making money, staying in shape and doing so without choking off your personality… You’ll probably like our book Efficiency. The benefits inc
lude: 1) How to get into the top 10% physically with one hour a day of exercise; 2) How to eat correctly to be in the top 10%; 3) How to figure out what type of intelligence you have; 4) How to use this type of intelligence to choose a career and the *right* company: Wall Street, Technology or Sales; 5) How to start an online business and sell (the basics and all you need to start); 6) Clear outline of how to create and start an online product business with correct copywriting; 7) How to go into affiliate marketing if someone wants to take a stab at the competitive space; 8) Overview of how affiliate marketing operates and how to do it and 9) How to do all of this and maintain a normal social life (avoid choking off your personality).
