By: Sean Crose
First things first – I’d like to officially go on record stating that the judges could rob Floyd Mayweather on August 26th, should his fight with Conor McGregor go twelve rounds. McGregor is the more popular of the two combatants that night, and boxing judges have a long, rich and honored history of just love, love, loving the popular guy. So yeah, don’t be too surprised if Conor is awarded the biggest upset win in the entire history of sports simply for being his most awesome self (rather than by, you know, actually doing better in the ring than Mayweather).
Having gotten all that ugliness out of the way, we may as well just try to have as much fun as we can with this one, gang. While it’s hard, if not impossible, to scrub oneself clean of the grime of this charade (in a sense, we’re all like Lady Macbeth at this point), it’s also difficult not to admit that there isn’t at least some entertainment value to this whole nonsense. Yes, the fight is a joke. Yes, people are behaving incomprehensibly -even by today’s standards – by being so eager to pay a fortune to watch this farce. Yes, there’s little chance of McGregor winning fairly (remember what I said about those judges, though). But there’s also a level of silliness here that’s getting hard not to delight in.
Take the fact, for instance, that team McGregor has hired none other that legendary referee Joe Cortez to help the fellas out in camp (Why not the iconic Mills Lane, you may well wonder). Cortez, you see, is going to – wait for it – “teach them the rules of boxing before the fight against Mayweather.” Those are Cortez’ own words, by the way, brought you courtesy of the Las Vegas Review-Journal. I’ll give McGregor this, he’s taking things seriously. There’s nothing, after all, quite like preparing for the biggest fight in history than sitting down and learning the basic freakin’ rules before you step in between the ropes. And who better to teach those rules, really, than Cortez? Here, you see, is the man who is known throughout the sporting world as being “firm but fair.”
In all honesty, though, it’s almost all too easy to laugh without actually pausing to understand what’s going on. McGregor is an MMA fighter, and as such will most likely want to rough Floyd up any way he can so long as that roughing up adheres to the rules of the game. Seen in such a light, the whole thing makes sense. It also makes sense that Cortez is wearing his referee’s outfit throughout McGregor’s sparing sessions in order to give matters an authentic feel. When all is said and done, there’s probably a lot about this whole enormous spectacle that makes sense (as opposed to cents) when viewed through a certain perspective. That doesn’t make any of it appear any less ridiculous, however.
Oh well, at least we’re through watching humanity be debased via those “brilliant” press conferences we all had to endure just over a week ago. Things are truly looking up. RIght?
Right??????????????????