In the age of fake news, this fight serves up fake sport

Far from being ‘the biggest sporting event of our lifetimes’, Mayweather v Mcgregor is a lucrative pantomime that reflects the worst excesses of a materialistic age

Over time, the words “opium of the people”, Karl Marx’s oft-recycled line about organised religion, have become wrenched from their original context. “Religion,” he wrote, “is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, the soul of soulless conditions.” It is hard not to view this weekend’s gaudy stage show with Floyd Mayweather and Conor Mcgregor in much the same fashion.

If nothing else, their confected nonsense is the ultimate distraction for a distracted society, a cash-grab for a materialistic age, a deep groan of all of us who know we should ignore it but who will still reach for the remote regardless.

“The biggest sporting event of our lifetimes,” screams the promotional literature on both sides of the boxing-mixed martial arts divide, which even by the absurd standards of Las Vegas takes some gall. For this is scarcely sport at all, but – how to put this gently? – trash. Compelling trash, to be sure, but trash all the same.

Yes, it might break pay-per-view records, but it is for the same reason that the less-than-plausible Fast and Furious is the richest movie franchise on Earth, whose star, former WWE wrestler Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson, earns more for one film than three-time Oscar winner Daniel Day-lewis has managed in a career.

Mayweather versus Mcgregor is an extension of these Trumpian times, where it matters not what you say, or how reprehensible the underlying sentiment – “dance for me, boy,” Mcgregor has told his opponent, in his Dublin gangster does antebellum slave master shtick – but how loudly you say it.

In the age of fake news, theirs is the biggest fake of all.

Seriously think they hate each other? Mayweather is the best thing that ever happened to Mcgregor, who never tires of boasting that their confrontation has “quadrupled my net worth”. And vice versa, too: in the two years since his victory over Manny Pacquiao, Mayweather has been struggling even to fill Bedfordshire leisure centres, such is his insistence upon hundreds of pounds for the dubious privilege of having a signed photograph with him. This decision to curtail his retirement brings not just an estimated £156million cheque but the joy of being fleetingly relevant once again.

A “cultural event that crosses all demographics and all social and economic factors”, says Mark