Jaded boxing fans will get a glimpse of what is so appealing to the rest of the world about these gigantic personalities clashing in the ring?
Hold off with the self-righteous condemnation and just imagine for one moment that the two athletes?and yeah, they were athletes long before they became marketing pros?are still hungry competitors.
It?s not a hard mental task.
Floyd Mayweather and Conor McGregor are in a position to earn their upcoming nine-figure paydays because they first put in the long hours to perfect their respective crafts. The fact that they could talk and create a mega-marketable persona for themselves is second to the burning desire that brought them to excellence in their respective disciplines.
Well, times change, but men don?t really change. Poke a little too deep below the fabricated role playing and you?re sure to find that same angry pride that pushed them into the gym and through pain to the very top of their combat sports.
So, how much will it take before a good show becomes the real thing? How long before something hits a nerve and the ?Money? fight becomes an actual fight?at least on some level?
Two press events into the Floyd Mayweather-Conor McGregor publicity tour, plenty of insults have already been tossed around, but the more biting and personal ones have come from McGregor.
The boisterous Irishman has touched on some issues that have, in the past, elicited real reactions from the usually unflappable Mayweather.
On Tuesday in Los Angeles, McGregor touched on Mayweather?s tax issues (?He?s in a fuckin? track suit?He can?t even afford a suit anymore?), provoking a ?Pay Your Taxes? chant the following day from the crowd in Toronto. On Wednesday, he touched on the embarrassing buzz from a couple years back about Mayweather not being able to read too well (?[you?re] carrying a school bag, you can?t even read!?). He hit at the core of Mayweather?s identity as an athlete by going after the ?manliness? of boxing (??this [is] half a fight, a quarter of a fight?this isn?t a true fight?if this was a true fight, it wouldn?t even take one round.?). McGregor even took a swipe at Mayweather?s alpha dog ego by twice shouting a degrading ?Dance for me, boy? as Mayweather took his turn hyping the fight on stage.
Surely, the insults will continue and McGregor will continue to touch on issues that have been proven to move Mayweather in the past. Maybe it provokes a real fire in Mayweather at some point, maybe it doesn?t. Both Mayweather and McGregor may be so conscious of the spectacle and the showbiz aspect necessary to sell this fight that nothing either can say would provoke any real emotion.
But, again, we?re dealing with two fierce competitors who have literally made their livings in battle. To say that it?s all an act and will always remain an act no matter what happens is to not understand the psyche of a fighter.
Maybe that ?this is real? moment comes in the ring. Could an errant (or not so errant) elbow from McGregor make Mayweather bleed and turn the evening from a worked shoot into a ?real? fight? Could a front-running and dismissive Mayweather humiliate McGregor into turning things from a boxing match into a sloppy, ugly brawl?
There are so many things that could happen, both before and during the fight, to awaken the fighter inside the salesman. It would be silly to assume that two gigantic egos housed inside two combat sports kingpins will run through a script where neither tries to really dominate the other.
Maybe that ?real? moment is very brief, perhaps just a fleeting exchange where real damage is the objective before both sides regain their composure and business becomes business again. But it?s a good bet that, at some point, the farce becomes something real and jaded boxing fans will get a glimpse of what is so appealing to the rest of the world about these gigantic personalities clashing in the ring.
Nobody is saying that it?s going to be the Fight of the Year, but two raging egos locked into one ring is usually a recipe for fun.
