Opinion: Mayweather-McGregor and media culpability

So, we have the latest report from Floyd Mayweather that the Conor McGregor fight is absolutely, for sure going to happen. This story continues to have some kind of traction despite the fact that, without clearing some genuinely impressive legal and promotional hurdles, it’s an impossibility.

It was first leaked to a number of mainstream news sites. This has the combination bonus of these sites having much more reach, with them being perhaps more likely to run straight with the story than the more specialist sites and blogs might. Bad Left Hook, for example, might be cognizant of the promotional realities around a Mayweather-McGregor fight and decline to initially report on it.

There are few people in a news cycle who are actively incentivized in any way to report on what is “the truth” for something like this. The situation, in fact, benefits from having no objective truth available at all, because a rumour exists as soon as it is discussed. To mention it is to immediately call it into existence. Thus, Mayweather and his team can sagely nod. Yes, it’s certainly a rumour. We can’t, of course, disclose whether it’s true or not due to the sensitive financial information involved. Similarly, because it technically exists as a Schroedinger’s cat of could be booked / not booked yet there’s no basis to make an article about how silly the whole thing is.

It’s almost a closed loop: the fighters can leak unlikely stories to the media; the media pick up clicks; the fans get to share it with their friends and to rant about the matchups to each other; the fighters get added exposure and buzz. The rewards for each participant are clear, so the question becomes where the cost is.

May-Pac was terrible

Debatably, it’s a cost which Mayweather has felt already. Namely, sizzle vs steak. The Mayweather-Pacquiao fight was a once-in-a-generation event. It broke through to an unprecedented number of viewers. It also sucked.

As I’ve written before, watching real-life combat sports can be traumatizing for those who have never watched them before. Not necessarily in the violence and blood and trauma, but more often in the lack of it. Someone who comes from watching films like Rocky and Kickboxer (where the actors hit each other with enough strikes to kill a bull moose) can watch the clinical and tactical exchanges of a real MMA or boxing match and bounce right off. The aforementioned May-Pac fight was an especially bad introduction for people who had never seen boxing before. “Tactical” would be generous, and even hardcore fans blanched at the sight of an ageing Pacquaio trotting around the ring after Mayweather, occasionally eating a straight right or a left hook before being wrapped up in the clinch. A few people were sufficiently invested in a Mayweather win to convince themselves that it had been beautiful technical mastery, and fewer still have gotten far enough into combat sports that they genuinely enjoyed it in some way.

As an aside, this is something which happens in almost every area of entertainment: people set off on a journey to an eventual destination which would have been repellent to them when they started out. Some metal fans can end up listening with …

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