No winners in this ring
Tonight, America will bear witness to an athletic travesty. The sport of boxing, which in recent years has lost viewers and money and energy to the bloodsport of mixed martial arts, pits undefeated boxer Floyd Mayweather, 40, against 29-year-old Ultimate Fighting Championship bare-knuckled brawler Conor McGregor.
If predictions hold, it will the most-watched bout in history. More than Joe Frazier vs. Muhammad Ali; Mike Tyson vs. Evander Holyfield; Jack Dempsey vs. Gene Tunney; Jack Johnson vs. Jim Jeffries.
This fight — in its conception, its run-up and likely on the canvas itself — dishonors that history.
We will not here author a paean to the purity of pugilism. It’s built on human sweat and blood and no shortage of head trauma. Men have died in refereed rings.
Over the decades, with millions of dollars bet on outcomes in Vegas and Atlantic City, corruption has hung thick in the air.
And pro boxing has a storied tradition of operatic showmanship that often plays on if not toys with America’s racial divisions.
Enter Mayweather, enter McGregor, in 2017, in the midst of wider sports awakening about brain injury and, at least in theory, enlightened racial attitudes.
Bringing a relatively unskilled mixed martial artist out of the octagon and into a boxing ring for the first time, against a man considered one of the best fighters of his time, could threaten a life.
The Association of Ringside Physicians, a group of more than 100 doctors, argues that the two men are fundamentally mismatched, and that the Nevada State Athletic Commission, which sanctioned the multi-million-dollar bout and gets a cut of gross revenue of every ticket sold, is conflicted.
The tale of Tim Hague, a mixed martial artist who just two months ago sustained fatal injuries in his fourth true boxing match is more than cautionary. It’s chilling.
And while some gently race-laced ribbing is to be expected in the hammy weigh-ins and press conferences leading up to such a superfight — Mayweather is African American, McGregor white and Irish — these two have gleefully thrown kerosene on a country already struggling with an upsurge in prejudice.
Back in July, McGregor referred to “Rocky III” as the movie with “dancing monkeys in the gym.”
“Dance for me, boy,” he told Mayweather, invoking a simple word that anyone familiar with black history knows to be a cutting slur. (He also called himself “half-black from the belly button down.”)
For good measure, Mayweather played into the race-war frame, calling his fight “for all the blacks, around the world.” And he hurled at McGregor a vile epithet often aimed at homosexuals, among plenty other curses.
Mayweather, by the way, has a long history of violence against women.
Far be it from us to begrudge anyone an evening of entertainment. Pony up the $89.95 ($99.95 in high-definition), turn on the TV, root for whoever you like. But after the refs raise an arm, remember to shower.