Conor McGregor was suspended for two months for medical reasons after his 10th round technical knockout loss to Floyd Mayweather, the Nevada State Athletic Commission indicated.
The suspension was listed on the commission's boxing show results from Saturday night's TKO at the T-Mobile Arena. The document listed McGregor as unable to have any contact until Oct. 11.
The commission sanctioned the fight and has wide lattitude over any kind of boxing, wrestling, cagefighting, mixed martial arts, etc., according to Nevada state law.
In fact, it's the final authority on all licensing matters, able to approve, deny, revoke, or suspend all licenses for "unarmed combat."
And Las Vegas is the "unarmed combat" center of the universe, the UFC is headquartered there, and the Nevada commission probably has more big sporting events under its belt than anywhere, so its opinion is influencial.
The commission regulates all of Las Vegas' "promoters, boxers, kickboxers, mixed martial arts fighters, seconds, ring officials, managers, and matchmakers." It's unlikely anyone anywhere would flaunt one of its rulings and try to book McGregor for anything.
McGregor should just take his millions somewhere and rest and recover until Oct. 11, and take heart that his fight may hit a record for viewership, much of it illegal, Forbes said.
Mayweather, who said he was retiring after the fight at 50-0, was not given a medical suspension.
Mayweather stopped McGregor with punches in the tenth while everyone was waiting for referee Robert Byrd to stop the fight, which he did at the 1:05 mark, MMAJunkie.com noted. The bout was scheduled to go 12 rounds.
According to commission rules (467.562), a medical suspension is given when a fighter is "determined by a physician to be unfit to compete" until "it is shown that he or she is fit for further competition …"
The rule states that fighters suspended for 30 days or more will need to take a medical exam at the direction of the commission.
MMAJunkie.com said McGregor (21-3 MMA, 0-1 boxing) had enough of an impressive showing against Mayweather, particularly early in the fight, that the bout could trigger a duel MMA and boxing career. He is currently the UFC lightweight champion.
Forbes reported that while official pay-per-view numbers aren’t in, the fight received huge viewership through illegal channels. The magazine quoted the digital platform security company Irdeto on Monday estimating that 239 illegal streams of the fight were viewed by 2.9 million people.
Irdeto stated that 165 of those were provided through social media channels like Facebook, YouTube, Periscope and Twitch.
Forbes said many believe the eyeballs and payout on Saturday's fight will surpass Mayweather's May 2015 fight against Manny Pacquiao, which attracted 4.6 million pay-per-view buys and revenue of more than $400 million.