Mayweather vs McGregor: The Anniversary, But Do We Celebrate

Mayweather vs McGregor: The Anniversary, But Do We Celebrate

A year ago two world’s temporarily merged to form an uneasy alliance as superstars Floyd Mayweather and Conor McGregor squared off in Las Vegas. One-year on is it a fight that we would rather forget, and did it really do each fighter any favours despite the millions they earned from the fight.

For Mayweather it got him to 50-0 surpassing the record of Rocky Marciano, but should that still be 49-0, does Mayweather believe everyone is that gullible, should it really count, of course it shouldn’t.

The fight should not have been made, it was a fight that had no right in being sanctioned, McGregor making his pro debut against the greatest fighter of his generation. Ego’s formed the idea of the fight, money to be made got the fight sanctioned, it was an exhibition in so many ways.

I wonder 12-months on if McGregor would do it again, what harm has it done to his MMA career. McGregor returns in October to what he does best, or at least what he used to do best. Will the near 2 year hiatus from his own sport cost him, have we missed out on seeing the best years of McGregor inside a cage. The kind of money he made courtesy of Mayweather he could not hope to have made in MMA but has it robbed McGregor of the obsession he used to have for MMA, is it now an exercise in making money rather than making history, have we lost the old McGregor forever, in a fighting sense has he just got old.

I have no doubt McGregor believed he could win, a belief undoubtedly driven by his ego, but in reality, he couldn’t. Even a softer faded version of Mayweather handled him with relative easy once he saw out any early threat. Mayweather knew McGregor would fade, and he did.

We all bought into it, even those of us who should have known better, we all played our part, we all bought the PPV just to see what would happen even though we knew exactly what would happen.

Everything from the pre-fight hype to the fight itself was predictable, we all knew the script and we all knew exactly how the story would conclude. Like some cynical game of chess, all the pieces were shamelessly, with us the fans as more than willing pawns, manoeuvred into position to make it all happen, shame on them shame on us all. The money is still probably being counted but I doubt history will look too kindly on the whole circus and thankfully it has left town hopefully never to return.