Note: This feature is composed of both written and video content. Please make sure to watch the videos throughout as they provide much of the analysis.

Rankings and consistency matter in combat sports, but only up to a point. Unlike any other major sport you care to name, combat sports are happy to set aside the most sensible match ups in favour of the most appealing ones. Unlike fans of football, tennis or basketball, fight fans also have a degree of democracy: each dollar spent at the gate or on pay-per-view serves as a vote for “more of this”. Sometimes this works to the benefit of the audience, when the money on the table for the best guys in the sport is just too much to turn down. Other times it works to the detriment of the game. After all, why should the promoter of one fighter run around and jump through hoops for the promoter of another when he can get just as many saps in to watch his fighter crush some schlub or questionable mandatory challenger?

On the one hand it is disappointing that Conor McGregor is perched atop of the most competitive and fast moving division in mixed martial arts but has fought just a couple of the top contenders there. On the other hand this fight—Conor McGregor versus Floyd Mayweather—serves as a reminder that the fight game still provides more peculiar storylines than could be thought up by a team of screenwriters and that it still, for better or worse, belongs to the people.

This writer was in the camp that said it would never happen. It seemed as though Floyd Mayweather was too proud of his accomplishments to sully his fiftieth career victory with a 0-0 professional boxer. Many said that Nevada would never even sanction the fight. But they clearly didn’t know how commissions operate—Nevada has been so desperate to help this fight along that they even waived their mandatory 10oz. glove size just to allow "Mayweather - McGregor to be Contested with Small Gloves” to make the rounds and to get some press attention from those gullible enough to think that 8oz. gloves are somehow "McGregor’s terrain". But money is money whether you fight in the soul-crushing tedium of the nine-to-five, or sell your brain cells away in front of crowds baying for your blood, and money brought us whatever this is. Frankly, McGregor could come out in the first round, take a knee, take the count, and we would only have ourselves to blame. But if there is one thing that is compelling about Conor McGregor it is that no matter what costume he is wearing, or line he is reciting the day before a fight, he always fights exactly as he promises.

Introducing the Players

Before we continue, let us examine (in video form) the game that has carried Conor McGregor to two UFC titles, past the greatest featherweight of all time, and has allowed him to carry one of the highest knockout ratios among the elite of mixed martial arts.