Marty Josephson wasn’t watching the big fight on Saturday night; but noticed that our shallow so-called stars were on full display.
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May 2, 2015 was a splendid day for sports fans. The running of the Kentucky Derby, the final rounds of 2015 NFL draft, the deciding game of a magnificently played first round of the NBA playoffs, and the fight of the century. Floyd Mayweather, Jr. vs. Manny Pacquiao. A fight 6 years in the making.
I am boxing fan going back to years gone by when fathers and sons watched boxing together on Friday nights. The telecasts were gritty. The action was brutal. We all knew the sport was corrupt but it was part of Americana.
More recently, I have paid to watch some fights. But Mayweather vs. Pacquiao was not going to be one of these.
Watching these multimillionaire fighters, now 150 million dollars richer, who are years past their athletic primes competing in a match of a dying sport that reportedly will generate close to a billion dollars for Nevada, Showtime HBO, the casinos, and the economy as a whole didn’t seem very compelling.
Instead, I spent most of the evening in a small, eclectic restaurant drinking craft beer, eating homemade duck, venison and pork sausage, watching videos of a punk band unknown to me, talking with my wife, the bartenders and enjoying the stories of other patrons we don’t know and will never see again.
The fare for the evening was money much better spent than the $99 charged by Pay-Per-View to watch the inevitable outcome of the bigger, faster, more skilled athlete winning a boxing match while cameras scanned the audience for the celebrities who wanted to be seen at the current fight of the century.
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The celebrities who made a choice to watch a serial domestic abuser hit and be hit by someone who made the choice to be in the role of a combatant rather than to hit someone of his choosing while no one was there to watch except his son who, in Sept of 2010, wrote a note to the police describing Mayweather’s attack on his mother.
Ben Affleck, Beyonce and Jay Z, Jamie Foxx, Anna Paquin, Jimmy Kimmel, Louis CK, Magic Johnson, Will Smith, Michael J. Fox Michael, Jordan, Clint Eastwood, Charles Barkley Andre Agassi, Wolfgang Puck and Jessie Jackson were there. The political active political and social commentators of the world of celebrity. The influential, the pious and sometimes poignant A-listers. The champions of civil rights, LGBT rights, the spokespeople for medical research, gender equality and substance abuse. Many of the celebrity voices of what our society needs to do make our society a better place to live.
But, not on this night. On this night where the absence of celebrity would have voiced a statement that it is was important to not be seen, their presence made them silent on the subject of domestic abuse. On this night when individual decisions or a collective decision could have been made to not put money into the pocket of a four time convicted serial domestic abuser, they just couldn’t do it.
On this night the world of celebrity posed for the paparazzi. Their selfies are littering social media. Without pause they gladly endorsed the legitimacy of Floyd Mayweather and enriched him and those who sanctioned and profited from this match. This fight, as a competitive sporting event, was not a must see event.
This wasn’t the Ali-Frazier rivalry of contrasting boxing and political styles or the morbid curiosity of the menacing Mile Tyson vs. whoever stepped in the ring with him and, to no one’s surprise, the far superior Mayweather won.
But for the world of celebrity to be seen at the MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas was a must event.
This was a venue to display the wealth and privilege that allowed them to obtain one of ringside seats in a 16,000 seat stadium where only 500 tickets were initially allotted to the public. They displayed themselves to improve their brands and, in our society where wealth and privilege becomes influence, to make them more credible for whatever they are selling, supporting, or trying to influence.
Mayweather’s ongoing predilection for domestic abuse was trivialized even though the cost of domestic abuse is to set into motion a cycle of abuse that can destroy lives for generations.
But, to the celebrities who attended the fight of the century to enhance their brand or to simply be in the spotlight, that cost seemed to be only a sur-tax to be added to the price of their ticket.
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Photo Credit: Associated Press/File
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This article seems to be another case of humans policing other humans. I think it’s fine to stand against abuse and not supporting Mayweather, as an individual you have every right. What is not good is throwing those who don’t seem to express their disregard for what he does in his personal capacity the way you want them to under the bus. Celebrities are human too, I believe that unless I have paid to watch them perform on a stage, I have no say in what they do in their own time – which was absolutely the case with this… Read more »