It was that good. Boxing fans around the world were enthused, cheering, drinking beers in their favorite sports bars, and laying down bets on a fight billed as a great sporting spectacle set on an international stage.
A crowd numbered in the thousands showed up at a mid- morning venue in Toronto, Canada to catch a glimpse of their hero Conor McGregor. They were on hand to hear the Notorious One, the pride of Dublin Ireland with KO power in either hand trash-talk the aging pugilist, Floyd ‘Money-Grab’ Mayweather. It was such a one-sided pasting it was hard to watch.
McGregor encouraged the crowd, “Repeat after me. One, two, three. F..the Mayweathers!” And the crowd went wild, shouting out the F-bomb into the crisp morning air while Money May forced a smile and took the insults on the chin the same way he’d taken numerous blows on his chin over the course of his twenty year ring career.
There was New York, London, Toronto, and Los Angeles. The insults kept coming like a salvo of machine gun fire escaping from McGregor’s wide, gaping mouth. His glaring ego and outrageous behavior reached an all-time high. But this was entertainment and the fans loved every moment of it. PPV buys poured in at an alarming rate as die-hard, yet gullible boxing fans laid out hard-earned cash for what was billed as the fight of the century.
“There’s no way he can touch me,” McGregor told ardent boxing fans after butt-spanking Paulie Malignaggi and boasting how he would dismantle Mayweather. “I will KO him within four rounds. He is old and should have stayed retired.”
The doting media lapped up McGregor’s bombastic confidence and brutal honesty like a cat sipping a bowl of fresh milk. The brash, trash-talking, Irishman pimped the fight to a new level of insanity telling everyone how hard he had prepared for combat, and what a glorious day it would be for the UFC when he destroyed Mayweather in his hometown Las Vegas.
McGregor had allowed the prying eyes of the camera into his UFC fitness center. YouTube fanatics stared eagerly at PC screens or gazed into their I-phones to see McGregor jog in a pool of water while hooked up to electronic apparatus monitoring the activity. Coaches were checking his blood flow, heart-rate, and recovery time on the monitors then charting the results of his daily cardio workout.
“He’s a fine, fit man,” announced his trainer John Kavanagh. “I’ve worked with him for years. There’s none finer. I know what he’s capable of. And a knockout is not out of the question.”
In the eyes of the trainer McGregor was a two-fisted wrecking ball. There was no other way to explain it.
The public eye of scrutiny witnessed face to face the true worth of a pugilist showing the full array of his boxing skills. McGregor was a man obsessed. His play pen was the combat arena. And combat was his game.
Although McGregor was a MMA crossover, he had what it took to take the fight to Mayweather and bludgeon his way to victory. He had everyone convinced he was the truth, the real deal, pounding the heavy bag while training, and doing a clever two-step switch-over as part of his technique to confuse his opponent.
“Nobody can prepare for me,” he told the press. “I come from all angles, and no man can stop me, or withstand my power.”
Fight Night Buildup
On fight night television cameras honed in on the outside of the T-Mobil Arena. A million lights blinked on and off along the Las Vegas strip in the twilight of a desert sunset.
Inside the area McGregor had on his game face. He sauntered confidently up the aisle into the ring. Money May arrived much later. He operates on his own time…not the time ordinary people are bound to.
In time, the national anthems of Ireland and the USA were sung. They seemed to collide with one another in a showy display of pomp and ceremony –screamed from the hyper-active lungs of two lovely female singing stars. In time, the combatants were introduced, one by one, to the singing cheering masses outside the ring. Many paid lavish sums of money for what would turn out to be a mega fight worthy of being taken out with the afternoon trash.
Fight Tempo
The fight began with McGregor’s long right arm pawing, probing, and sporadically jabbing at Mayweather’s retreating head and body. Occasionally, McGregor would land a crisp left hand from his unorthodox stance. He was switching up in a surprising two-step, head feinting maneuver reminiscent of the late Bruce Lee’s fighting style minus the knuckle fists and swinging back kicks. Yet his feather-like array of punches on Mayweather’s dark glowing dome had very little impact. Where had all the vaunted punching power gone? For all the hype about McGregor’s KO power, he sure wasn’t showing it.
As for Money May, he fought with gloves held high and his ancient, forty plus year old body looked slow and ponderous as he lunged in to pot-shot McGregor. It was a faint reminder of what his punches were twenty years ago when he was a proud champion and really good. On this night Father Time had turned his punches and his crafty footwork into a shamble of what they once were.
Six Round Gas Out
In time, as many boxing pundits expected but failed to admit, McGregor began to gas out. Suddenly, it appeared as if he couldn’t breathe. His lungs were on fire. It seemed he was huffing and puffing and praying silently that the night wouldn’t end in disaster and humiliation…all the things he told us during the fight build up that his superior boxing IQ could handle.
Many at ringside, at home, and in sports bars around the world were witnessing the dismantling of a man who had promised the very same thing would happen to his opponent.
McGregor’s downfall was apparent from the sixth round on. An overly hyped MMA superstar was being taken apart by an aging, over the hill boxer, way past his prime. McGregor was gassing like steam hissing from an overused boiler just at the time Money May was coming on utilizing his elite boxing skills to punish his opponent.
The bout ended with a few well-timed head shots. The stumbling, fumbling McGregor had long since petered out and was searching mentally for a way out of the contest without being totally embarrassed. All the trash-talk about dismantling Mayweather within the first few rounds had vanished like a puff of smoke blown out to sea.
The Aftermath
Fight fans around the world (from New York to Hong Kong, from the back alleys of Bangkok to the pristine beaches of Caan on the French Riviera) are popping another beer or popping an aspirin to alleviate the pain of an unexpected Excedrin headache. They are shaking heads in disgust and disbelief, wondering why they had been duped again. The fight of the century turned out to be just another hoax, a colossal mismatch, and money-grab.
But in a way isn’t the blame on them? Sure the public was taken in by skillful media manipulation. The carnival of endless insults, humorous gut wrenching put downs and cheap shots were well orchestrated by Mayweather and MecGregor as part of a preconceived plan. Yet boxing fans accepted the hype, took it all in one insult at a time, and were hoodwinked into parting with their money. Media propaganda, half-truths, and a clever manipulation of the senses promised them one thing (great entertainment) but delivered just the opposite.
Fight promoters will take the money and run to the bank every day of every week if a naïve, easily exploited public are willing to shell it out, a dollar at a time, and then complain afterward about the fight not being what they had expected.
The Real Fight
Somewhere in a penthouse in Los Angeles Oscar De La Hoya and his partner Bernard Hopkins are licking their chops. Oscar came out publically a few days ago with his twitter slinging F-bomb tirade (and rightly so) denouncing the Mayweather/McGregor fiasco as bad for boxing. In the end this overly hyped washout may not be bad for boxing, but it has surely succeeded in conning a wide-eyed, easily finessed, easily deceived public out of their money.
The underlying message, if there is one, clearly shows big time fights –those hyped to the hilt –seldom live up to expectations.
The Mayweather/.McGregor sideshow, circus act needs to fade from memory as soon as possible, not only for the benefit of boxing but for the benefit of the UFC as well.
As Oscar De La Hoya states, “The real fight happens in a few weeks.”
The real fight is between two superstars, Gennady Golovkin and Canelo Alvarez, who know how to box and excite the fans. They have put in the hard work. They have sacrificed the good life for a Spartan existence laboring among sweat-filled gyms, jogging for miles in the countryside, and preparing earnestly during camp to make sure the product they put on display will please the buying public.
As boxers, now more than ever, they need the support of the public –not abandoned in the wake of a hideous, trash-talking mega event which never lived up to the mountains of media and commercial hype promoting it.
Golovkin vs. Canelo Alvarez is a fight worthy of being seen. It’s not too late either for the public to come out and support it. This fight will prove that boxing is still alive and well in spite of the boxing travesty we have just witnessed.
Photo Credit: Getty Images
Misguided and ultimately insensitive and irresponsible subheading. Come on, gents.