An Ex Pug’s notes on boxing’s big shitsho…err “Boxing Big Week?”

Robert Lashley
Aug 25, 2017 · 4 min read

My grandmother was the first person I watched the fights with. All but running a pool hall in Tacoma from 1942–1970 ( tended bar, did the books for the numbers runners, did the books and the place itself), she was inundated by the culture of the fight game; first with the radio broadcasts of Joe Louis’s later title fights, then with the ascendancy of Ray Robinson, then with the electric charge of Muhammad Ali on color television. More than just understanding that it was something to know to work in a bar, she had a particular affinity for boxers who had a certain decorm. Her fighters were men who could whop ass and be graceful. It was the reason that she preferred Frazier over Ali ( along with Ali’s almost unforgivable colorism). It was also the reason that her favorite fighter of all time was Alexis Arguello. Like the black and brown men she kept close to, she loved fighters who could take a tremendous amount of pain and not lose their humanity.

I’m certain that-if she was alive-my grandmother would have stopped being a fan of the sport because of Floyd Mayweather. My uncle Gerald told me that the night after his victory over Manny Pacquiao, a fight we were both glad we didn’t watch. If every big fight is a symbol of it’s time, that fight was a symbol of how many men hated women, as an eleven time abuser ( Mayweather) slickly outpointed a destructively fraudulent politician and activist who was outed as a homophobe and a sexist ( Pacquiao). What makes this fight different is that it is a also a symbol of how backward’s america has gone on the subject of race. In short, Mayweather/McGregor is a fight for the Reddit Troll era.

Most experts agree that the fight wont be much of one, and they would be right. McGregor is fighting his first orthodox boxing match amateur or professional, and Mayweather, even though 40, is one of the greatest boxers of his generation. The only reason that this is an event has nothing to do with credentials and everything to do with one of humanity’s most gruesome sins. If Conor Mcgregor was black ass CJ McDowell, a junior middleweight with three defeats in which he was forced to quit, he would be a fringe contender who would have a hard time filling up a VFW hall. His outbursts and epithets would easily have him pegged as a Mitch Green type joke, a boorish unsportsmanlike joke of an athlete who promised way more than he delivered.

Add dozens of scream fest press conferences and more than a handful racial appeals, and here we are. Where Gerry Cooney refused to engage combat sport’s “White hope Audience” and Vladimir Klitschko was so openly antipathetic toward it that he sounded like a Nation columnist; Conor McGregor race baited himself to a nine figure payday. No white opponent of Ali or Louis or white fighter in the history of boxing used race to get to where he is than McGregor. Not even Jim Jefferies, the ex champion who fought and lost to Jack Johnson in 1908, went to the “ monkey/boy/black from the waste down” depths McGregor has gone to get his money .

Conor has no chance to win the fight. He will have a very good chance to win the con, however. My prediction is that he will maul him on the ropes for the first 30 seconds to a minute until Floyd gains his faculties and sets a territory and radar for his punches. When he does, Conor will use his MMA drop move to injure him. He will write a check for the fine and win everything but the fight in public opinion.

The problem that Floyd will have is that the IRS opened the curtains for his final act this summer. The most loathsome and deficient monarch in the history of boxing, he has pilfered and gambled through 700 million, and there is no reason in the good earth to think that he will save one of these mega million dollar checks and live a comfortable middle aged life. Five times convicted for domestic violence(and unrepentant about each time) there is no way for him to have a respectful afterlife in boxing. Because of that he will have to eventually get in the ring with Errol Spence or Terrence Crawford: two excellent fighters who are nearing their prime and with the styles to beat a 41 year old version of himself easily. And once he loses, once his Reddit light district fans see that he is not living his ideal super predator life, they will drop him like a bad habit.

This will not end well for Floyd. This has a good chance of him ending in a gutter. When it does, it will not have happened to a nicer guy. McGregor’s inevitable ignominious ending on saturday will not have happened to a nicer guy. As for the fight? I’m going to a friend’s new album release at a mead bar that night.

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