Call it the prattle of the century: The egos of Floyd Mayweather (left) and Conor McGregor clash at Friday’s weigh-in. The men are fighting tonight in Las Vegas.
LAS VEGAS — This is a city that revels in cliché; and thanks to movies and magazines, glossy photos and slick ad campaigns, no one comes here for the first time.
The foreign sports cars straight from a teenager’s imagination park up front. The everyday rides that shuffle around working-class people pull in around back.
Men walk the Strip in new shoes that don’t have scuffs or creases. Women reveal skin that stays covered back home.
And, of course, there’s the Statue of Liberty next to the Egyptian runes next to the roller coaster tracks, all in the shadow of a 50-foot screen promoting what figures to be the biggest fight of all time: Floyd Mayweather vs. Conor McGregor in a 12-round boxing match. It’s a farce, and everyone knows it. Mayweather is one of the greatest boxers in history. His defense reminds aficionados of Willie Pep, the Will o’ the Wisp, a pugilist from the ’40s and ’50s who was said to be so hard to hit that he once won a round without throwing a punch.
McGregor, meanwhile, is one of the top guys of his era in a completely different sport.
Sure, mixed martial artists throw hooks and upper cuts like boxers. But they also throw knees and elbows. Plus, they grab and choke. And they scoop and slam.
No reasonable people give McGregor a chance to win, except that he’s already won.
And anyway, that’s not the point. This is about money and opportunity.
Stars of the UFC, the top MMA federation, don’t earn like top boxers. They also aren’t as well known in the mainstream. This fight puts McGregor in a new echelon on both fronts. He stands to make between $75 million and $150 million off this fight.
His career totals don’t approach these numbers.
By comparison, Mayweather could bring in more than $350 million, pushing his career earnings past $1 billion. He earned about $225 million facing Manny Pacquiao in 2015, but there isn’t another fighter in boxing or MMA that brings McGregor’s drawing potential.
The fight is available in any format you can conceive of. It’s available on payper-view. You could watch it at a bar. See it at a movie theater. Even order it to your cellphone.
The promotion, playing on racial divisions, the fear of missing out (what the online generation calls #FOMO), and rivalries between fans of boxing and MMA, has helped hype the fight to levels that only could be reached in today's era.
To think it all started with trash talk: “If you’re asking would I like to fight Floyd – I mean, who would not like to dance around the ring for $180 million?” McGregor told Conan O’Brien in 2015.
It gained momentum for familiar reasons. Dream matchups and what-if competitions are nothing new.
Who’s faster, Superman or the Flash? Who’s got the stronger arm, a pitcher or a quarterback? Who’s scarier, Dracula or the Wolfman?
But mix in social media, and everybody can voice an opinion, and promoters can see how much money stands to be made. It was too much for anyone to pass up, and all logical obstacles were ignored or overcome.
A guy making his pro debut got sanctioned to face a world champion. Mayweather came out of retirement (again). McGregor hired a referee to teach him the rules.
They’re taking advantage of an opportunity, and there’s a long history of that in boxing.
There was the heavyweight championship fight between Jack Dempsey and Tommy Gibbons, the fight that broke banks in Shelby, Mont.
There was the fight between heavyweight champ Jack Johnson and middleweight champ Stanley Ketchel. Promoters did everything they could to make Ketchel look like a legitimate threat, including having the Michigan Assassin wear hefty coats to make him look bigger.
And everyone who follows boxing knows better than to read too much into quotes ahead of a fight, when challengers always turn into King Kong.
The buildup to this fight was everything one would expect. Mayweather and McGregor traded typical insults, none of which reflected the best of us.
McGregor said that he didn’t mean anything by saying “dance for me, boy” or that he was “half-black from the belly button down.” But I know what I heard. He was doing anything he could to sell the fight, including pandering to any group he figured could cobble together $100 to order it.
I guess it could be said that Mayweather did the same thing when he responded saying he was fighting for “all the blacks around the world.” But that came off to me like a guy standing up for himself, not insulting an entire race.
Anyway, I’m sick of it. I was sick of it when I saw it during the presidential campaign. I was sick of it after Charlottesville. And I’m sick of it now. I’d like to believe we’re better than this.
But again, it’s part of the legacy of boxing to use individuals to appeal to the masses on base levels. And it’s never pretended to be anything else. The JohnsonKetchel fight in 1909 only happened because promoters thought they needed a “Great White Hope,” a white challenger to face Johnson, the first black heavyweight champ.
And if the energy in the city is an indicator, it’s working.
Everyone, from cabbies and bellhops to gamblers and drunks, is talking about the fight, and T-Mobile Arena was mostly full for the weigh-in Friday. The odds are laughable, but small bets are pouring in for McGregor, making him a walking lottery ticket for countless MMA fans. It could only happen in Vegas. It's a city where people ignore what’s real and focus on what’s possible. Here, drunks travel in packs and scream obscenities during the day. This city knows its reputation and doesn't back away from it.
And we're watching, even though we've seen it all before.