Time for Mayweather-McGregor ... the first of how many?
Starting as a rumor, growing into a business agreement, sold as a spectacle, it’s time for the Conor McGregorFloyd Mayweather partnership to provide its promise: A fight.
The outcome of the Saturday match is not difficult to envision. There will be Mayweather, in his professional environment, avoiding punches while applying plenty. And there will be McGregor, out of his MMA comfort zone, trying to do what has been impossible and walk through Mayweather’s barrages.
In any bout, there is the allure of the unpredictable. But what typically happens when a fighter accustomed to using four limbs, not two, enters a boxing ring for the first time is that he will turn instinctively, as if to prepare to kick. Figure McGregor to fall into that trap. Then, a legendary scientist like Mayweather will apply punitive damage. Shaken by his mistake, McGregor won’t recover.
Not the most powerful hitter, Mayweather will have difficulty winning by knockout. But he will land 90-plus-percent of the punches and draw 100 percent of the blood.
If the fight is stopped by a doctor, it will allow McGregor to argue that he was just about ready to figure Mayweather out. If his protests are loud enough — or if any judge had awarded him even one round — it will allow McGregor-Mayweather Inc. to grow.
Prediction: Mayweather in the sixth, by TKO, when McGregor is too bloody … but not too demoralized ... to demand, and receive, a doover.
Just keep it right here and I’ll let you know when I start getting esports as an entertainment option.
As far back as May, yet already four years into his professional baseball career which followed a college baseball experience at Sacramento State, Rhys Hoskins was a little conflicted.
There he was, in the clubhouse in Allentown, before a minor-league game, half-volunteering to become an outfielder. And he wasn’t being heard.
“I did it in college,” he shrugged. “And I’ll go out before games and shag balls. I could do it.”
Yet the Phillies were determined that it wouldn’t, couldn’t, shouldn’t happen. They’d decided where Hoskins belonged in their plans, and their equipment managers didn’t keep it a secret.
“They gave me a first baseman’s mitt,” Hoskins said, with half a shrug. “And that’s where I’ve been ever since.”
Since Tommy Joseph, a decent major-league power hitter, was the Phils’ first baseman, and since he was only two years older than the 24-year-old Hoskins, that became a problem. Ultimately, Pete Mackanin just blurted it out, saying Hoskins and Joseph could not coexist on a major-league roster.
But with the season careening out of control, with injuries in the outfield, and with the need to do something to rescue crumbling fan interest, the Phillies rushed Hoskins through a brief, minorleague outfield tutorial, then promoted him to the major leagues. And within his first 15 games, he had eight home runs.
The Phillies should have been paying attention in May, when the power-injection may have mattered … and been possible.
I don’t get why fans holding tickets to a sporting event are prohibited from leaving the building and then returning. There is a word for a place that keeps people locked in: Penitentiary.
Never healthy enough to publicly play five-onfive basketball anywhere near Philadelphia since the Sixers made him the top overall pick in the 2016 draft, Ben Simmons recently was caught dunking in some lowlevel Australian summer event.
And that’s how it will go with a player whose sizzle has always been greater than whatever it was on the barbie. He will do only what’s best and most enjoyable for Ben Simmons.
If anything, the unannounced end to Simmons’ sports-science-ordered five-on-five ban typified a Sixers offseason that was long on promise but short on progress. Markelle Fultz played a couple of summer league games. Joel Embiid was everywhere but on a basketball floor. Simmons was Simmons. And the Sixers pacified their hypnotized fans with such trinkets as new uniforms … that, and a heavy one-year investment in J.J. Redick, if only to quiet Brett Brown’s demands for better shooting.
Training camp begins Sept. 26, a day after a meet-the-press event where the Sixers will try to step around questions about minutes restrictions on Embiid. But they can’t mumble-away their plans for Simmons, not after he was healthy enough to play down under ... and in more ways than one.
It is one thing to be oblivious to reality. It is another to have one of the worst major-league teams in all of soccer, to rarely finance a star-level player, and yet tout that your club has chosen — wait for it — a chief tattoo officer.
Did April Fools’ come late this year?
For years, plenty have put up with ordinary soccer (or worse) as the Union pretends to build something. But until the players are rocking tattoos that read, “MLS Champions” it just might be better to add a goal-scorer than a guy able to needle the word “Mom” onto a forearm.
And just so you know, I won’t have any urge to look at the next eclipse either.