WASHINGTON — I often say that the answer to 90 percent of “why is this happening?” questions in the sports world (and, likely, the world at large) is money. That’s especially true in boxing, and never more so than in the case of the impending Connor McGregor-Floyd Mayweather Jr. debacle coming to Las Vegas next week. The only way to make charades like this go away is to stop funding them.
First, let’s understand what this “fight” is. Whatever you think of Mayweather’s tedious style and history of dodging top opponents, he is arguably the most successful boxer of his generation. McGregor isn’t a boxer at all, but an MMA fighter who has risen to prominence through a combination of skill, showmanship and self-promotion. He has never boxed professionally.
This setup is less a boxing match than a carnival. It’s closer to Chad Johnson racing a horse or Michael Phelps a (digital) shark than a real fight. It’s all spectacle, one fueled beyond the ring by not just the personas of those involved, but the larger racial dynamics of an Irishman and an African-American man squaring off.
That McGregor said some racist stuff in the first press conference wasn’t accidental. That he defended himself while continuing to double and triple down wasn’t accidental. That the entire, unnecessary, four-day affair was dragged out over the second week of July during the MLB All-Star break — the deadest of dead weeks on the sports calendar — was anything but unintentional.
Every bit of training video and sparring partner interview breathlessly broadcast by the complicit sports media only further serves to muddy the waters and make this look like something legitimate, instead of the farce it is. But as long as you keep paying to watch this charade, it will continue. As long as you keep writing and tweeting and talking about both it and them, it will continue.
(I am fully aware that, on some level, by writing about it, I am adding to the conversation — this has been and will be my only contribution.)
Every person with money invested in this pathetic grift needs to take it in the pants hard enough for enough people to decide to never do it again. So here’s what not to do:
1. Do not buy the fight
Whatever you do, don’t spend any money on this fight. Don’t pay the insane $99.95 pay-per-view price to watch it (in HD), don’t bet on it — nothing. Money is the only oxygen that keeps this alive. Suffocate it.
2. Do not watch the fight
Even if you don’t pay for it yourself, don’t participate in watching it. Don’t go to a friend’s house who bought the fight or to a bar. I can’t believe anyone actually would, but needless to say, don’t go to a movie theater to see it.
3. Do not talk about the fight
You know why people will watch the fight? Because they feel like the conversation around it is all-encompassing and overwhelming, and they’ll have a legitimate fear of having missed out on one of the biggest cultural events of the year. If this was a real fight, that would be a perfectly understandable sentiment. It’s not.
4. Do not emotionally invest yourself in the outcome
In the search for heroes and villains, you’ll find none of the former and a pair of the latter in this matchup. McGregor is a cesspool of hackneyed self-promotion run amok, a carnival barker who has long since sold his soul and anything else he could get his hands on for his next big paycheck. Mayweather’s worse.
If you have the stomach for it, you can read his then 10-year-old son’s statement to police describing the domestic violence Mayweather inflicted upon his mother.
It’s understandable to want to find catharsis through McGregor getting his teeth busted out of his face or Mayweather getting knocked on his a** to ruin his padded run at perfection in embarrassing fashion. But you won’t really find that. All you’ll find is an unfinished result that sets up another rematch, another chance for this pair of grifters to start their dance anew, to try to fleece you again for their own gain.
5. For God’s sake, don’t bet on the fight
This is where the money is really made, the money that keeps these carnivals going. Vegas thrives on the action created by spectacles like this. Without that action, the casinos make no money.
You might see the fight as an easy moneymaking opportunity, and in a fair and just world, it would be. No matter how marginally profitable a bet on Mayweather would be, it is as close to free money as you’ll find in the sports betting world. But you shouldn’t bet money on Mayweather (and whatever you do, don’t put money on McGregor, you fool).
You shouldn’t bet on Mayweather for the obvious reasons, but also for the perhaps not-as-obvious reason that the only way he loses this fight is if it’s not on the up-and-up; if some catastrophe somehow “magically” befalls him; if McGregor continuously throws low blows and the fight is called; if these two conspire to do something, anything, to prompt any possible excuse for a rematch, to convince you to cough up more of your money.
If you honestly can’t see that happening, I’ve got some oceanfront property right along the Las Vegas Strip to sell you.
