Do we separate the art from the artist?
When Billy Jean comes on, do we tap our foot any less vigorously because of what singer Michael Jackson purportedly got up to behind closed doors? The ‘Jesus Juice’ and the out of court settlements on child molestation charges and the many photos of naked children discovered in his belongings?
My guess is we don’t.
Likewise, do we celebrate Floyd Mayweather’s total mastery of boxing without considering his lengthy history of assaults on women?
Perhaps we do.
After making mixed martial artist Conor McGregor look utterly ordinary over ten rounds of boxing in Las Vegas on Saturday night to extend his professional record to 50 wins and no losses, Mayweather was asked how he would like to be remembered.
‘As a great person’, came the reply. ‘Not just inside the ring, but outside the ring.’ Funny how we all want what we can’t have – even a man who has just earned £300m in 30 minutes.
For those of us who wanted to see some sense finally beaten into Mayweather – some karmic retribution, perhaps, not just for the repeated battery of women, but also for the relentless vulgarity and obscene materialism – Saturday night at the T-Mobile Arena was depressing.
McGregor had seemed just the man to deliver the beating, too. A two weight champion in the octagon – the cage in which he had hitherto only fought – he has demonstrated again and again that he is capable of blending many different forms of martial art to horrifyingly brutal effect.
Of course, Jiu Jitsu and karate and the other disciplines he has mastered would not be allowed versus Mayweather, but surely boxing, in its cushioned gloves and with its broken clinches, would be a cakewalk compared to flying knee kicks and forearm chokes and elbow punches.
‘Trust me, I’ll breeze right through him’, McGregor had said after the weigh in, claiming his larger weight, and therefore power, would enable him to burst through Mayweather’s fabled defences.
But it didn’t turn out like that.
The walks to the ring were exciting, at least. McGregor came out slowly, wearing the Irish flag, staring bloodlessly straight down the camera in front of him, eyeballing an audience of billions. He looked every inch the Irish assassin.
Mayweather, inexplicably, walked out wearing a black balaclava.
But as soon as the robes were off and the action had begun, the gulf in class was obvious. McGregor, so lethal-seeming in the cage, looked plodding in the ring. His punches, thrown in gloves, lacked sting and snap, certainly compared to Mayweather’s.
For the first two rounds, Mayweather was circumspect, happy to take some punishment while observing his opponent. ‘We’ve got one big advantage’, McGregor’s long-time coach John Kavanagh had said in the build-up to the fight. ‘We’ve got 49 boxing fights of his to watch. He’s got none of ours.’
Here was the American fighter’s first chance to properly see what he was up against – and he took it gladly, even if it meant losing some points on the judges’ score cards.
But by the third round, McGregor began to look out of breath. By the fourth, Mayweather was winking at people in ringside seats and landing body shots at will. The Irishman occasionally deceived with some nifty footwork, switching to southpaw in the blink of an eye, but in truth the effect was minimal.
By the fifth round, the punishment was coming only one way – and not the way those hoping for a great upset had hoped. Despite the roars of the hugely partisan crowd, McGregor was being beaten soundly and his legs were going. Mayweather was totally in control.
The referee could have stopped it at the end of the ninth, but he waited until the start of the tenth, when it was plainly obvious that McGregor was just another boxer – another ‘bum’, to use his own description of Mayweather’s previous opponents – incapable of finding answers to the questions being asked of him by a genius in black trunks.
‘I thought it was close’, the Irishman said afterwards, a statement fit to unleash a great tsunami of cringing, because in hindsight there is so much to cringe about. So much was said in the build-up that now had been proved incontrovertible idiocy.
And so much hope was expended by fools like this correspondent on grounds that were patently so thin. However, could anyone have thought that the greatest boxer to lace gloves could be beaten by a man who had never fought a professional bout? It wasn’t just McGregor Mayweather made look stupid.
Where now for both fighters? Mayweather into the sunset, he claimed, this time seemingly with conviction. No more fighting. Retirement and more time spent on his businesses – like the Vegas strip club he owns (‘because breasts, vaginas, music and alcohol will never go out of style.’)
McGregor, presumably, goes back to the cage, a diminished man. He took a risk, talked some silly trash, made a stack, but ultimately came up wanting. ‘We’re not here to take part, we’re here to take over,’ he is fond of saying. ‘Talking doesn’t win fights,’ was Mayweather’s astute reply.
The final analysis will show that Conor McGregor had his arse handed to him. The naysayers were right and the blood and thunder brawl so many had hoped for never really transpired.
Mayweather may beat women, but it won’t be in the ring that he gets his comeuppance.
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