Why Boxing Fans Still Can't Handle the Truth About Mayweather vs. McGregor

In listening to the verbal crossfire over the Mayweather-McGregor fight, the attentive observer will be quick to note that something more than mere sport is at issue. The level of bias and extremism is extraordinary and suggests that subterranean psychological forces are at play.

Perhaps this should not be so surprising. All sport and perhaps all forms of competition are approximations of war. They provide us with a sublimated, theatrical, and metaphoric means for exploring the inescapably violent aspect of what it is to be an organism on this planet. We are descended from fighters. Yet as long as all goes well, we live in harmony with our fellow human beings and never have to raise a fist. So it is that as civilized creatures sworn to peace and the rule of law, we need sport like a married man, loyal to his wife, needs porn. The beast has got to be let out somehow.

If we were to imagine particular sports aligned along a spectrum, ranging from those that are most circumscribed and metaphoric in their expression of conflict to those that are most direct, we would have at one end sports like tennis, baseball, and basketball, and at the other end the martial arts, such as wrestling, boxing, and karate, with tackle football falling somewhere in between.

Games of unarmed combat engage the martial basis of our interest in sports more straightforwardly than all other games, for only in these is the purpose to literally bring your opponent into a state of physical submission.

But the psychological resonance of our games extends beyond their expression of the violent propensities of our nature and includes our deep biological impulse to mark ourselves as ready mates, as exemplary DNA bearers of our sex and gender.

Men, in an attempt to define their value to women, like to think of themselves as fulfilling certain social roles. One of the leading roles men aspire to occupy is that of warrior. In addition to providing a pro-social outlet for a man’s violent impulses, being a warrior can earn him a respected place in society and even make the ladies take a fancy to him.

Among athletes, boxers especially imagine themselves to be warriors, the toughest of tough guys, and that is indeed what they have always been. Other athletes try to put a ball in their opponent’s goal; boxers try to knock him out.

But here’s the thing: for 20 or so years now, there’s been a new & tougher kid on the block. Among the forms of unarmed combat that have found civilized expression, there is only one real contender for toughest of the tough, and that is MMA.

Compared to those of MMA, the rules of boxing seem arbitrary, artificially limiting, and ultimately unsatisfying. Boxing doesn’t look anything like real fighting. It looks like a game intended to simulate one aspect of fighting. Most troubling of all, it is entirely possible for someone to be a great boxer but not a great fighter. With boxing we have not yet gotten at the essential thing. In MMA, we come much closer, maybe as close as our decency and civilized values will allow us.

And so it is that the true believers of boxing have become tenderly defensive of their sport. Boxing has provided them with a mythology replete with heroes from which they draw inspiration. What is at stake here is nothing less than their identity, their pride, and their manhood.

Boxing fans have already had to concede the pretty much unquestionable truth that boxing as a sport is less badass than MMA. That much they could live with. A silver medal tempers your pride (you’re not #1) but it also preserves it (you’re #2, and that’s pretty good).

And herein lay the great threat posed to the boxing loyalist by the Maymac madness: To be beaten on their own turf and at their own game would just be too damn much.

One testicle had already been captured — would MMA take the other one as well?

For this reason it was absolutely necessary — as a matter of psychological self-preservation — for the Maymac fight not to be seriously competitive, to in fact be nothing more than a ‘farce,’ a ‘circus,’ a ‘joke.’

And so it was that when Conor McGregor walked into the ring on August 26th and put up what most agree was a decent fight against a boxing legend, the apologists for the faith had to go to work.

That one remaining testicle had to be salvaged.

They had a damn difficult task before them: their job was nothing less than to explain how what we all saw happen didn’t really happen.

One of the more valiant, if heartbreaking attempts, was that of the ESPN columnist Dotun Akintoye.

Mr Akintoye wants us to believe that the fight between Conor Mcgregor and Floyd Mayweather was not in fact a real fight but a "perfectly executed piece of theatre."

Now, he doesn’t mean exactly what he says. He is not saying this was a WWE style match, with both parties to the fight playing choreographed roles in order to achieve a pre-ordained outcome.

What he is saying is basically that Floyd Mayweather acted as animal trainer in this circus act, and in doing so tried, for the sake of the audience, to create a moment in which it seemed there was some real danger, when in fact there was none.

McGregor fought his heart out trying to win, but for Mayweather it was all a lighthearted game, his victory a foregone conclusion.

Thus the length of the fight and its apparent competitiveness is a tribute to the thoroughgoing mastery of Floyd Mayweather rather in any way a detraction.

Floyd could have knocked the utterly unthreatening McGregor out immediately, but instead decided for the sake of a good show to draw the fight out.

Make no mistake: That is an absolutely extraordinary claim.

The first hint that Mr Akintoye also knows it is extraordinary is when he describes it as "obvious."

This sort of hyperbole, employed for the purpose of subtly mocking the opposition, tells you that the reasons for his view probably run pretty thin.

Also, to admit that it is not obvious would already be to admit too much. It would be to concede that it was in fact a real possibility that the neophyte McGregor could put up a competitive fight against the legendary Floyd Mayweather.

That one remaining testicle winces at the very thought.

Let’s be perfectly clear: the real reason for Mr. Akintoye’s views is that the alternative — namely, that a 0-0 boxing novice could come in and competitively fight a 49-0 legend — would simply create too much cognitive dissonance for the hardcore boxing fan.

Such hard-to-digest truths could precipitate the sort of existential upheaval that leads to an identity crisis, a drop of T-levels, and possibly a serious bout of erectile disfunction.

For the boxing loyalist, the logical result would be only too painful: Not only are these uncultured MMA savages more manly than we are, but they can also suit up and beat us at our own quaint, old-fashioned gentleman’s game.

Self-deception is a tricky business. Clever little rationalizations are required to hide the truth from onself. To self-lie successfully, your right hand must not know what your left hand is doing. Thus it is that Mr Akintoye has been wise enough to proffer something like "reasons" for his views.

In essence his "argument" is this: Floyd Mayweather couldn’t possibly have been boxing in earnest, for in the fight he abandoned the fundamentals of the sport.

You can look at the article yourself if you want to know the details, but the problem with this type of argument is clear.

What happened to Mayweather is what happens in every fight when someone loses, or is losing, or otherwise struggles. It is one thing to know the fundamentals, another entirely to execute them in real time, under pressure — under pressure from a skilled opponent who brings some highly threatening tools to the contest. Forty years old, two years out of the ring— all of those causes might provide an explanation of why Floyd struggled to do what he might ideally do.

A second part of Mr. Akintoye’s rationalization is the assumption that Floyd Mayweather could afford to play around in this way, since he was never afraid of being hurt by Conor McGregor. And the reason for this — are you ready? — is that McGregor "doesn’t even have average power."

That’s a peculiar view to hold given that McGregor’s knockout rate in MMA is near 90 percent and that the two boxers that have been in the ring with McGregor — Floyd Mayweather and Pauli Malignacci — admit, if begrudgingly, that McGregor’s power is "solid" and "above average."

The author’s reason for holding such a bizarre view? Apparently, it’s got something to do with the way McGregor looks when he throws a punch. I’m not joking. You can read the article yourself.

A final problem for this fabulous feat of sanity-saving self-deception is how so many see it differently than the writer and his ilk. In fact, dozens of commentators have said that McGregor was impressive and that the fight was competitive. How on earth could that be?

One possibility, as Akintoye acknowledges, is that they are all naive. That’s of course not the case: we could fill a list of who’s who among boxers and boxing journalists that have spoken positively of the fight and McGregor’s performance.

That leaves one other alternative: There is a vast conspiracy afoot! Everyone has gotten together — presumably in a secret basement somewhere — and decided to "mythologize" the fight "so as not to offend the probably record-breaking pay-per-view audience."

And there, finally, Mr Akintoye approximates the truth.

What is at issue here is a matter of mythology, hero worship, and the dark underbelly of fear and loathing that gives resonance to the stories we tell ourselves.

Just remember, brother: that one bony finger pointing at the other guy is matched by three pointing back at you.