Last Saturday night Americans piled into sports bars, restaurants, friends’ and co-workers’ apartments and houses to get a seat for the big fight. People spent a quick hundred on Pay-Per-View without a second thought. Excited viewers gladly paid roughly fifty to seventy-five dollars a ticket to get a spot a local sports bar. The hype for this fight has been a long time coming since contracts were singed May 18, 2017. It was the classic tale of a villainous, bad boy undefeated champ, Floyd Mayweather, who prior to this fight was 49-0, versus the unknown, newbie underdog Conor McGregor. People throughout the course of history eat that story line up. And they did.
The highly anticipated fight began around midnight, and it started in quite an interesting way. Since the very first round it seemed that McGregor was clearly dominating. McGregor was on the offensive, keeping Mayweather on the defensive. McGregor threw far more punches, while Mayweather kept his gloves up blocking and protecting his face, letting McGregor throw punch after punch.
This continued through rounds two through five or six. For the average viewer, they would agree it was an interesting start. We all were thinking, Hey, the underdog is carrying himself quite well! He might just win this thing! However, the fight lasted ten rounds. Somewhere around the seventh or eight round, McGregor began to show signs of loss of stamina and apparent fatigue. Mayweather was simply holding back. By the tenth round, Mayweather seemed to flip some internal switch, because he completely dominated McGregor. Mayweather started throwing punches, rather than deflecting them. Mayweather appeared refreshed and energetic and ready to change the course of the fight. This was proved with a series of powerful punches landing on McGregor resulting in a knockout. McGregor did not fall down with his face flat on the mat, lying immobile, like many intense knockout scenes from the Rocky movies we all know and love; instead, McGregor swayed back propped up against the ring ropes for support. There was a far away look in his glazed over eyes, and McGregor knew he had lost the fight. With this, the crowd exploded into applause, cheering and booming for the victorious Floyd Mayweather.
Mayweather had a plan, and it seemed like he at least was told to draw out the fight. In my opinion, Mayweather could have beaten McGregor far earlier in the fight. However, what were his sponsors telling him to do? It would not have made for such an exhilarating fight if the match had ended in the first or second round. This means that the fight was not a test or pure strength, but merely just an example of a performance in return for money. Were both fighters expected to follow some type of script in a sense? Big investors want tickets to sell, and they want an intense hype surrounding the fight. These are all business tactics which at the end of the day are all good and fine, but where is the line drawn for the integrity of a sport? Whatever happened out there on August 26, 2107 may be up for debate for sometime, but we can all agree that both athletes are strong and highly capable, outstanding athletes.