By Norm Frauenheim
It’s beginning to look as if Floyd Mayweather Jr. and Conor McGregor are just a few dancing bears away from reaching an agreement on whatever it is they intend to do in June, or September or, whenever.
All of the talk is creating its own momentum. Where there’s smoke, there’s cash these days and there should be enough of the latter to ensure that the spectacle will happen.
By all accounts, it’ll be a boxing match, although there are good reasons to think it’ll turn into something else.
It’s no secret that McGregor has no boxing experience, which is another way of saying he’d have no chance against the best boxer of the last decade. McGregor knows that. If he doesn’t, he’d find out soon enough.
At the very second he discovers he’s got no shot, the guess here is that he’d kick Mayweather in the head. McGregor gets disqualified and probably fined. But what would he have to lose? He’d still bank seven, maybe eight, figures and his MMA loyalists would love the crazy moment.
Yeah, it would be outrageous. But isn’t that a reason so many people are talking about it?
After all, Mayweather-McGregor wouldn’t be about sportsmanship. We aren’t talking about a gentle game of lawn croquet here, although their respective fans might watch even that. Who knows? McGregor might pick up one of those mallets and drop Mayweather faster than Victor Ortiz.
Truth is, it’s hard to know exactly what to make of Mayweather-McGregor. Neither fish nor fowl. More like fishy and foul.
From a boxing perspective, the real problem rests with Mayweather’s pursuit of legacy. It’s not about the cash. Mayweather is better at making money than just about anybody under the big top. Money is his nickname.
He’ll be remembered more for that than even his ample boxing skill. Still, legacy is important to him. If it weren’t, he wouldn’t be selling those T-shirts and caps bearing that familiar acronym, TBE – The Best Ever.
But it would be a cheap insult to history if Mayweather were allowed to go 50-0 – one victory better than Rocky Marciano’s iconic record – against a mixed-martial artist with no boxing experience.
If Nevada or New York or any other state agency sanctioned Mayweather-McGregor as a boxing match, the result – win, lose or draw – becomes a matter of record.
There’s already precedent for that. In an internet event on pay-per-view in Phoenix a year ago, Roy Jones Jr. added a victory and knockout to his record (65-9 47 KOs) in an Arizona-sanctioned boxing match against an MMA novice, Vyron Phillips, who told the AZ commission that he had boxed as an amateur.
McGregor, of course, says he will pull off a global shocker and knock out Mayweather. What else is he going to say? Other than his MMA loyalists, however, there is no argument in any language about McGregor’s chances. It’s zero, nada, bupkis.
It would be against Manny Pacquiao in a rematch, or Timothy Bradley, or Keith Thurman, or Shawn Porter, or Danny Garcia, or Errol Spence, or Kell Brook, or Amir Khan, or Jessie Vargas. Any of them would be a truer test than McGregor could ever be.
Come to think of it, all of them and more should sign a petition and deliver it to state commissions, asking that McGregor-Mayweather not be sanctioned as a boxing match.
License it for what it is: A big money-maker, but not a history-maker.
