From its savage beginnings, Cage fighting has come a long way.
Since 1993, the mongrel conglomeration of fighting arts—known as Mixed Martial Arts (MMA)—has undergone something of an image refit.
It’s a reinvention largely down to the efforts of the sport’s main organisation, the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC)—a group that wrote the rulebook for the sport we see today.
Twenty-four years ago, when it started, the sport was a convenient whipping boy for politicians and lawmakers of all stripes looking to curry favour with citizens easily disturbed by amateurish depictions of brawling men in a cage clawing at each other like dogs in a pit.
Today, it has an air of professionalism and polish, its participants respected for their training ethic and preparation; gone are the mismatches and gruesome freak show components. Many of the cardio-fitness exercises used in MMA training, such as the double-handed heavy rope wave, have filtered out into mainstream gym programs throughout the world.
Conor McGregor vs. Floyd Mayweather is UFC vs. boxing
A charismatic Irishman, Conor McGregor, heads-up the UFC offering; a hybrid combat sport that incorporates elements of martial-arts, boxing, Olympic wrestling and money-attracting showmanship. It’s a pugilistic formula primed for huge money pay-per-view mega-match events usually associated with big-ticket boxing.
Floyd Mayweather Jr, nearly 40 and retired, is boxing’s biggest draw card. His last fight with Manny Pacquiao earned him more than US$200 million. Although he’s declared an end to his fight career, he’s had his appetite for more mega-match money piqued by the relentless, loud and sustained caterwauling coming from the jabbering mouth of the pugnacious Irishman.
A source close to McGregor—anyone from inner-Dublin, at the very least knows someone close to him said “Conor and Floyd Mayweather have agreed a deal to fight and have both settled on their respective fees.
“The contract hasn’t officially been signed yet because of a third-party hold up, but all the details have all been agreed on”.
The ‘details’ he mentions are an insistence that McGregor be guaranteed a payday in excess of US$100 million.
“The fight could even be announced within two weeks.”
Money is the key component here and McGregor is a sportsman of the moment—a self-promoting phenomenon borne of the digital age. Like many industries that have suffered due to the internet circumventing traditional business models, Conor’s use of social media takes fight promotion away from the traditional and in a whole new direction.
Conversely, Mayweather’s promotional acumen relies on his excellent reputation among boxing’s massive traditional supporter base.
McGregor is among the world’s greatest proponents of social-media aided self-promotion. He has 10.7 million Instagram followers, nearly four million Twitter followers and more than five million Facebook followers. All of this guarantees his opinion and message gets out there…all day, every day, relentlessly.
The Irishman is as precocious as his sport; he’s captured the attention of the world and diverted it to a new, ferocious and entertaining mode of combat. The strength and entertainment-value of his fighting skill is nearly matched by his expert use of social media.
Both fighters share similar cultural attributes
McGregor grew up in Crumlin, an inner-city Dublin suburb with a tough reputation borne from its working-class, factory-working roots; a place where kids quickly learn to think on their feet. Fights are common. More common, though, is an aggressive verbal jousting; the famous Irish ‘gift of the gab’ isn’t all jokes and funny stories—it has a less well-known tourist-unfriendly dark side. Verbal combat is practised routinely by all Dubliners, and inner city Dubliners are its most vicious practitioners.
McGregor’s infamous trash-talking mouth is an attribute most young Crumlin toughs take for granted. From where he’s from, you don’t just beat someone up; the coup de grace is to humiliate them as well.
Similarly, Floyd Mayweather Jr comes from perhaps the most famously tough minority community in history. The African-American community is replete with storied examples of toughness overcoming adversity.
In Mayweather’s case, he was born into a family of boxers; but even so, as a youngster, he was witness to the ills of a community suffering from marginalisation and deprivation. He realised at a young age that he’d have to pound his way out of an alarming predestination with fists and business smarts.
A watershed fight like no other, or money-making circus stunt?
Both men are acutely aware of what poverty and having nothing looks like.
Both men also realised early that aggression and ruthlessness offer a clear pathway to a better destiny.
McGregor, and the sport he represents, is a coming force. He’s 28-years old and as hungry as they come. Mayweather is nearly 40 and retired. He fronts a sport that had its heyday decades ago and today is looking for a spark to propel it back to its 80s glory days when Thomas Hearns, Sugar Ray Leonard and Marvin Hagler used to regularly beat the living suitcase out of each other.
Whatever you say about the relative skill of each fighter, a stoush between the two would be loud, dramatic and utterly captivating. If it went ahead, the build-up alone would guarantee the greatest verbal exchange of psychologically penetrating insults in fight history.
