They weren’t at their best.
But even when Conor McGregor and Floyd Mayweather share an off-night, they’re still the envy of every young fighter learning the art of self-promotion.
The circus came to town on Friday evening and the spectacle’s ringmaster and his opponent, a master of the ring, were forced to resort to reusing lines that they’d uttered in the days leading up to the London leg of their promotional tour.
The quitter shtick, the limited rule-set nonsense, the incessant cries of “hard work.” It was becoming tiresome.
Having learned their lesson from an absolutely flat Thursday in New York, when the crowd could not be won back onside following a 90-minute delay to proceedings, the production was upped for the final stop.
The boxing ring which will host Chris Eubank Jr’s defence of his IBO super-middleweight title on Saturday was opportunistically used to host the final presser but, again, the flawed method of forcing both McGregor and Mayweather to deliver monologues proved to be a regrettable decision.
With nothing to play off, both men simply rehashed everything that they’d already said in Los Angeles, Toronto and Brooklyn and while it was a relief to see them answer a handful of questions from the media from the ring, it was simply too little too late.
Us media folk are criticised quite often. But we do serve a function at events such as pre-fight press conferences in that we give the fighters something to react to, something to feed off, questions through which they can express their personalities.
Two more charismatic combat sportsmen have never existed but asking them to produce fresh material on every stop of this four-city world tour was a huge ask.
They’re athletes. Not roasters.
Of course they were going to return to the well a few too many times and they could certainly have done with topics to debate courtesy of the gathered media.
With gloves and without gloves, McGregor is a counter-puncher. Just like he prefers to let his opponents lead in the Octagon, he also performs best when he’s reacting with his peerless quick wit to rivals’ attempted jibes.
By the same token, if you just give Mayweather a microphone and tell him to do his thing for ten minutes then at least nine of them will be taken up with him shouting “yeah!” as his brain rushes to remember how to pronounce the Irish term for idiot.
It was repetitive.
It was done.
It was bloody brilliant all the same.
Even a poor sideshow makes for a fun watch, particularly when you’ve got the two best entertainers in the business running the show.
This was absolutely deafening. #MayMacWorldTour pic.twitter.com/SJYSKCu2GC
— JOE (@JOE_co_uk) July 14, 2017
I’m not here to talk shit about the London leg of the tour because I’ve never been part of something as loud that wasn’t a sporting event but it just disappoints me to think what could have been.
The sheer noise that drowned out the entirety of Showtime Sports executive Stephen Espinoza’s address proved true the rumours that 5,000 Irish fight fans had made the short trip across the water to watch their favourite son in action.
But the aim of this particular expedition was to guarantee beyond a shadow of a doubt that the August 26 pay-per-view buyrate would eclipse that of Mayweather vs. Pacquiao, to ensure that fans would pack out the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas and to leave a lasting memory in potential viewers’ heads that this was an event like none other.
Tuesday’s and Wednesday’s offerings accomplished that but in the two pressers that followed, everything kind of meshed together into one messy piece of middle-of-the-road production. They just put microphones in front of a couple of very loud mouths and hoped that gold fell out.
Sometimes chaos has to be embraced and that’s the reason why the culmination of the world tour between McGregor and former foe, Jose Aldo, was so unforgettable. Fans were handed a live microphone and allowed to ask questions of the men they’d be spending a lot of money to watch in action.
Why the UFC didn’t push for a similar set-up in London and go out with one last hoorah is beyond me.
It will be suggested that Mayweather, being the A-side of this particular contest, will have wanted to avoid the abuse of the travelling tricolour-sporting throng but, don’t get it twisted, Mayweather puts promotion over all else and prioritises the ultimate payday over any hurt feelings that occur in the process of hyping a fight.
It was the scramble for last-minute drama that forced Mayweather to stupidly resort to the use of anti-gay slur because he wanted to go out with a bang and have fight fans thinking he went too far, which would translate directly to pay-per-view revenue as those McGregor supporters would have been convinced to splash out to watch their fighter teach the 49-0 great a lesson.
Hindsight is 20/20, of course, and the event was not a failure by any means but it would have gone down in combat sports history if the crowd was given a voice and if the media was allowed to provide a fresh dynamic to set London apart from the rest of the tour.
The fighters looked like the travelling had taken it out of them on Friday night and they will welcome the return of a sparring schedule that is likely easier on their bodies than having to turn it on in front of thousands every evening after just getting off an international flight.
When the circus comes to town, you go.
And when the ringmasters are McGregor and Mayweather, you enjoy.
We’ll be the first to step right up on August 26 but it’s hard to shake the feeling that, on Friday night, an opportunity was passed up to send this contest into the realm of the unmissable.
