My crush is into something called “lateral-thinking puzzles”. They’re fun little riddles presenting an odd scenario that you have to figure out.
For example: A man walks up to a bartender and asks for a glass of water. The bartender shoves a gun in the man’s face, the man thanks the bartender, then leaves. Why?
As irksome as it is trying to figure something like that out, I can do one even better: Two men walk around a square platform for 48 minutes. They don’t do anything of value, but when they leave, they’re each hundreds of millions of dollars richer than when they entered. How?
If the second puzzle is infuriating to you, don’t worry. The fact that Conor McGregor and Floyd Mayweather Jr. can get away with robbing the country bumpkins who will pay to watch their “fight” is beyond all logic for most right-thinking people.
According to Forbes, Mayweather Jr. could make up to $400 million while McGregor would get $127 million, should the pay-per-view projections pan out. And holy cow, that is entirely too much for how this fight will ultimately go down.
Let’s be real, here’s how the majority of us will watch this fight: Through the power of Twitter and Instagram, we will see the few blows each fighter managed to land on the other person. And then?
Judge’s decision. How freakin’ fun.
Just be aware that there are those among us who will gladly shell out the $99.95 to watch about three hours of advertisements leading up to the most disappointing fight since ‘Batman v. Superman.’
If for some reason you decide to practice this exercise in self-masochism and actually watch the fight, then I can’t decide whether to pity you or laugh at you. Sure, it’ll be a once-in-a-lifetime event that promises to be the talk of social media for the evening and perhaps the next morning. And yes, there are bound to be countless memes and gifs that arise from this dance of debauchery.
But this is a media stunt. A public con job.
Mayweather is an excellent “defensive” boxer. That’s the rather generous term bestowed upon him by boxing analysts meaning that he hasn’t knocked out an opponent in nearly six years. It’s also because he tends to spend the majority of fights dancing around the ring after landing a few punches for the judges.
McGregor, on the other hand, has four knockouts (three by TKO) in the last two-plus years. He is, however, fighting out of his element, so it’s a wash.
Just like this whole fight will be.
The man asking for a glass of water from the bartender had the hiccups. The bartender, realizing this, used the gun to scare the man and thus rid him of his ailment.
I’m afraid that the outcome of August’s fight will be much less satisfying.
Contact Morgan McMullen at mmcmullen@alligator.org and follow him on Twitter @MorganMcMuffin.
Conor McGregor (right) taunts Floyd Mayweather Jr. while posing for photos during a press conference on July 11, 2017, in Los Angeles.
