Less than two weeks out from fight night, I have largely ignored the impending spectacle looming over the sport. This weekend, however, there is nothing else to talk about. No important fights, no news, only the never ending hype generating machine that is the media presence around August 26th. For lack of anything else at all, it is time to join the noise machine.
How do I feel about this match up? Like most else in the serious boxing circle, I am at least a little annoyed by it. Yet, I don’t think for the same reason. The boxing fan in me is actually somewhat amused by the notion. I am curious to see just how much better the world’s best boxer is at boxing than one of the best strikers in MMA, even in a diminished forty year old form. I do not think that Floyd Mayweather Jr had any intention of otherwise fighting again, so I do not feel as if we are being robbed of anything.
I am also not worried about “yet another disappointing representation of boxing” to the mainstream sports fans and media. With the PBC’s return to broadcast television and Top Rank’s new venture to ESPN, there are plenty other mismatches actually doing the very same thing to a larger available audience than the one that will buy this PPV. The sport of boxing will go on completely unchanged following the conclusion of August 26th.
So why, then, am I annoyed? What bothers me here is that the UFC’s premiere star and lightweight champion is completely out of the fold in MMA. Yes, it is the mixed martial arts fan in me that is annoyed by this fight. Conor McGregor should be fighting in the cage, not the ring. He has no business here. I will admit that, largely due to this website, I have become a bit of a lapsed MMA fan; I just don’t have the same amount of time. Yet, I would gladly be buying this if it was a UFC PPV with a McGregor title defense against Khabib Nurmagomedov or Tony Ferguson.
Do I think Conor McGregor has a chance here? Sure, he does. You will read and hear a lot of dismissive perspectives from the boxing world, but he can win. Maybe Floyd is a significantly enough worse athlete at 40 than McGregor, who is a really great athlete, that the skill difference can be negated when other factors like size come into play as well. Maybe Floyd won’t take Conor seriously, will try to walk him down, and walk into something. Maybe they decided to fix the damn thing to sell us all again on a rematch.
Do I think any of this will happen though? No. Absolutely not. I won’t entirely dismiss Conor McGregor because he is a truly elite athlete with big time experience on major fighting stages, but I liken his odds to mine of winning the upcoming large Powerball jackpot. Conor and I will try and buy our tickets, but our odds are better that we will die in a car accident driving to the store than actually winning. Assuming we survive the drive to our prospective arenas, however, we will have our shot!
The most recent conversation surrounding the fight has been McGregor’s training camp controversy with Paulie Malignaggi. The short version, if you somehow have not followed this, is that Paulie was serving as a McGregor sparring partner. Now he isn’t. Basically, a tired Malignaggi went down from what was more or less a push late in the session, but Conor’s people released a photo of it on social media as if Malignaggi was put on the canvas from shots. This is a major no-no in terms of traditional boxing training camp ethics and Malignaggi has been throwing a fit about it in his familiar style ever since.
What I gather from this is twofold. One, with a little more video of Conor in boxing coming out as a result of this, he continues to look pretty terrible. Every clip of him in a boxing drill or sparring just further exposes him as a novice in the sport. Furthermore, this feels a lot to me like setting up a more winnable second professional boxing match with an extremely faded, former name like Paulie Malignaggi following the expected loss to Mayweather. If he can beat Paulie, and he probably knows now whether or not he feels like he can, Conor can then set up another big event with say an old Manny Pacquiao or something along those lines.
I am admittedly speculating here, but this whole event feels like a UFC cash out on Conor McGregor. Their entire business model will be in jeopardy if they take him back. If they pay the Irish star anywhere near what he can make in boxing going forward, they will have to raise the salary of every other star in the sport when they start refusing to fight for pennies on a McGregor dollar. The UFC controls salaries in a way boxing does not. They can’t take him back and expect to use the same business practices that made that organization to begin with. They must know this too. McGregor even has even stated that he plans to continue in both sports following this fight in the past few days.
Ready yourself for Conor McGregor versus Paulie Malignaggi on Showtime in the not too distant future.
Will I buy the PPV? Well, yes, I have to cover a boxing match of this magnitude. Should you buy the PPV? Don’t overthink the question. If you can afford it and want to see the spectacle, then by all means go ahead. You withholding your one hundred dollar bill on principle is not going to have any impact on the sport going forward; it is not going to be a meaningful protest vote. Honestly, in its own unique way and isolated from the repressed MMA fan within, I am kind of looking forward to it.
Plus, let’s not deny the impact this fight is going to have on the general public in a way that I am not sure that even Mayweather/Pacquiao had. In my day to day life, I have so many people who know I am into boxing approach me concerning the fight. I know this is anecdotal, but I did not find anywhere near the street level interest for MayPac as I am finding for MayMac. This is your chance to be both a part of the larger cultural conversation and in the boxing world at the same time. Who knows when that will happen again?
Finally, let’s not deny ourselves the impending satisfaction of having all our arguments with all those lovely casual fans be proven right come fight night. You know it is going to feel good. If you want to feel it live, you will need to buy the show or struggle with a likely awful stream.
There. Over a thousand words on Mayweather/McGregor. Now I feel all dirty.
