Mayweather beat McGregor. Fact.
More facts: McGregor lasted longer than most educated boxing fans thought he would. He landed more shots than any other Mayweather opponent except for Canelo Alvarez ("But that's because Floyd changed his style..." SHUT UP! He changed his style because he had to.). And millions of self-proclaimed boxing fans won't bother watching Canelo Vs Triple G. Criminal.
And an opinion: McGregor brought more attention to boxing than anybody else who faced Mayweather in recent years. I'm not talking about the real boxing fans who know loads of facts and figures (yawn) about the sweet science. I'm not even talking about the fair (May)weather fans or the new McGregor UFC disciples. It's the people who were drawn into Mystic Mac's spell after a lifetime of not knowing a jab from a cross. Who did that? The one and only Conor McGregor.
Right, that last sentence, and the title of this post are both a bit misleading. As the Facebook group, Spide Pride, pointed out before the fight, his son is called Conor as well. But let's leave cute Conor Og (or Junior) alone for the sake of decency. If you want to be shitty, you can find a comments section somewhere else that'll welcome you with open arms.
Spide Pride were gently taking the piss out of Mick Konstantin's excellent song of the same name when they posted:
there's only one Conor McGregor🎶
Is BALLIX......sure his kids called Conor also?
That's cool. And the singer probably didn't even notice. He was busy. McGregor invited Konstantin to Vegas off the back of that, and in the candid videos that followed, I couldn't help but smile at the idea that Konstantin was a bard of sorts, leading an army of ne'er-do-wells in green football shirts through Vegas. Now, in reality, a lot of that army was probably felled by alcohol poisoning, sunburn, and beaten dockets by the time Mayweather stopped McGregor in the tenth round. BUT I doubt Konstantin and the pasty troops will think about their heat rashes and other unfortunate self-inflicted health issues when they tell their part of the story in years to come. They'll talk about taking over as one rather than taking part as individuals.
The lyrics of Konstantin's song include a reference to McGregor knocking out Mayweather. That didn't happen in this reality. But that still doesn't mean it was impossible.
I've read and heard plenty of arguments against that last statement. And I saw Mayweather school McGregor in boxing live; with bleary eyes; fuelled by black Irish coffees, and a promise to my kids that I'd wake them before dawn and heat up pizza for breakfast.
But I still believe McGregor could have knocked out Mayweather. He could have. Anything's possible.
In another version of this world, Conor said, 'Feck da money!' and wheel-kicked Floyd. Just for the craic. In yet another reality, Floyd agreed to step into a cage instead of the square circle. There's even a scenario in the infinite universes in which the fight won't happen until 2018, and people will still argue that Floyd isn't too old to outbox an MMA fighter. And they might be right in that timeline. Or wrong.
But that's not how it panned out here in this reality on the 26th of August 2017. The 27th, even, where I was sitting.
And yet, a short YouTube video in which my family paid homage to Mick Konstantin's song, is approaching 7,000 views at the time of writing this post. After the fight. The loss. The lack of knockout on Conor's part.* That's double the views from the week before, when McGregor's win was still a possibility.
There are also surprisingly few shitty comments on the video as well, considering it lives in YouTube, the spiritual home of the lowly shit-poster. Now, I'll admit, I deleted a couple of the first negative comments because I felt a responsibility towards my children and their feelings. I forgot for a minute that they're tough, and confident, and (unlike me) they don't read the comments. So now I just let them hang there. Trolls and keyboard warriors will do what trolls and keyboard warriors do. My eldest already knows that, and she's been stung a lot worse by sham friends than shit-posting strangers. Her brothers don't give a fuck about anything. The three of them will be fine.
So I'm relaxing on that hair-trigger of parental guilt and Irish temper. The safety is on.
And I welcome you to sample a wee bit of craic with the Brennans:
#DownWithTheMayweathers #CarefulNow #AndStillTeamMcGregor
*Technically, Mayweather didn't knock McGregor out either, but I'm glad the ref stopped it. That ref gifted McGregor a longer career. Love him or hate him, you know you want to see what McGregor does next.
No?
Just me, is it?
Aye. Dead on.
