Bikini duo sums up fight

The show: Mayweather/McGregor Fight Highlights (YouTube) The moment: The bikini girls

It all went according to plan. For months, boxing champ Floyd Mayweather and mixed martial arts champ Conor McGregor baited (and, in the case of McGregor, often race-baited) each other to stir up interest for their Las Vegas bout, at $100 per pay-per-view.

During the fight, in a ring branded by Corona beer, Mayweather let McGregor hit at him for three rounds. For the next six, he backed McGregor around the ring. In the 10th, he got off three series of six punches each, straight to the head, hard. The referee called it, and the fighters hugged, beaming. No wonder: For 28 minutes of boxing, McGregor earned $100 million and Mayweather $200 million.

In the post-fight news conference, Mayweather appeared in a bedazzled track suit and an Avion tequila cap. McGregor wore a paisley suit and carried a bottle of Irish whiskey. In his other hand, he held a plastic cup of whiskey, which Mayweather fist-bumped. I couldn’t tear my eyes from the two women posing behind them, near-identical dark-haired Barbies in Corona bikinis who stood like robots for 45 minutes, blank smiles pasted on their faces the whole time. Every now and then they’d move, but it was always the same movement: one hand on hip, the other arm straight, hand on thigh. Their cheek muscles were as impressive as the fighters’ pecs, but they summed up the whole enterprise: flashy, staged, soulless. The boxing match aired Saturday night on pay-per-view. Johanna Schneller is a media connoisseur who zeroes in on pop-culture moments. She usually appears Monday through Thursday.