With a little over a month until the biggest and most expensive boxing match since Mayweather-Pacquiao, Floyd Mayweather and Connor McGregor have taken the traditional pre-fight, promotional press conference to a whole new trashy level. Now before I go any further, I firmly believe these traveling shit talking shows are highly glorified Jerry Springer episodes and really don’t do the fight any good in promoting it or getting many people who previously wouldn’t be interested in paying the absurd pay-per-view price to see it, to actually see it. The fight itself, is not expected to much of a fight at all, as McGregor is making his professional boxing debut against arguably the greatest boxer of all time and a boxer who owns an all-time record of 49-0. So of course, I figured the press conferences and all the pre-fight festivities would be the most entertaining aspects of this fight. But it could possibly be what turns many off and away from this event. The four day media tour that started on Tuesday in Los Angeles and concluded today in London evolved into an uncomfortable display of trash talking that according to Fox Sports’ Skip Bayless, has turned Mayweather into a sympathetic figure. That not only says a lot coming from the highly critical of everyone Skip Bayless, but the fact that anyone with the disturbing history of domestic violence that Floyd Mayweather has and an athlete with that bad of a negative reputation become a sympathetic figure going into this fight. McGregor crossed multiple lines with questionable comments in reference to asking Floyd to “dance for him” and his awkward comments that he was “half black bellow the belly button”. Not only could it be seen as offensive but it gives the audience and listeners the uncomfortable experience of second hand embarrassment.
But lets be real with ourselves for just a moment: what else did we honestly expect? Boxing pressers and interviews are vulgar in nature and have notoriously gotten violent in the past, from Mike Tyson claiming he would eat Lennox Lewis’ children after a fight against Lou Savarese to Iron Mike actually punching one of Lewis’ security guards during the press conference for the Tyson-Lewis bout in Memphis. These events aren’t meant to be baptist prayer meetings by any means and are not supposed to be classy. Boxing is a brutal sport that has diminished some of the worlds most physically dominant athletes and has even taken some lives in the process. But what these are not meant to be, is a display of racist or homophobic remarks or embarrassing Springer show-like antics. To me, this only shows that the fight is nothing but a money and attention grab.
The most unfortunate part of all of this is the fact that this fight will overshadow the main fight of the calendar year which is between two of the biggest names in the sport of boxing and that is the fight between Canelo Alvarez and Gennady Golovkin. Golovkin has yet to be beat as a professional and Alvarez is revered by many to be the best boxer in the world right now that is not named Floyd Mayweather. It will be a much closer boxing match than Mayweather and McGregor and will include two fighters that have everything to gain and everything to lose. But not many will care about the fight in comparison to the fight on August 26th. This a sign that the sport has died, that substance has been replaced by a traveling dog and pony show that will ultimately result in one of the more predictable outcomes in the sports history. And for boxing, it is a sign of how far the sport has fallen.
The Long 2 