Boxing, like all sports, is addictive because it is so unsatisfying. In a boxing film, you can be assured of a narrative arc, building to a meaningful ending: a victory—or, more often, a moral victory, assuring viewers that the world makes sense, even when it doesn’t seem to. But in boxing itself no such resolution is assured. For every thrilling upset, there are a dozen fights in which the underdog suffers a dispiriting beatdown and learns nothing—teaches us nothing—in the process. This is true for all sports: the outcomes are truly uncertain, and therefore arbitrary, narratively speaking; fans must find ways to derive meaning from meaningless events. Boxing heightens this complicated pleasure because the outcomes can be so drastic: a bad loss can derail a fighter’s year, his career, his life.

One of the simplest ways to impose the illusion of order onto this ongoing chaos is to designate a good guy and a bad guy, in hopes that goodness will triumph. Two years ago, when Floyd Mayweather, Jr., fought Manny Pacquiao, Mayweather was widely cast as the villain: a cash-flaunting braggart who was also, disturbingly, a man with a history of violence against women. That made Pacquiao the hero, a story line that was slightly muddled by Pacquiao’s contention, in an interview, that people who approved of homosexuality were “worse than animals.” Pacquiao apologized but he didn’t recant, and his remarks seemed especially significant because of his other job: he was a member of the Philippine House of Representatives. Pacquiao is now a senator, and a political ally of Rodrigo Duterte, the country’s fierce President. Last month, in Australia, Pacquiao was the betting favorite, and the designated heel, in a match against a popular local underdog named Jeff Horn, who won a shocking (and puzzling) decision. In boxing, “good guy” and “bad guy” are relative descriptions, and sometimes temporary ones.

This Saturday, the two premier bad guys in combat sports are scheduled to meet: Mayweather is fighting Conor McGregor, a virtuoso trash-talker and U.F.C. champion whose fists and mouth have combined to give him the opportunity to make his boxing début against one of the sport’s modern masters, before what should be one of the largest global audiences ever to watch a fight. As boxers these two are woefully mismatched, but as provocateurs their skills are more comparable. Press events allowed Mayweather to display his usual serene confidence, while McGregor pranced and ranted. “He is fucked,” McGregor said, at one event. “I’m going to knock him out inside four rounds, mark my words.” To underscore the point, McGregor wore a pinstripe suit with an unsubtle message subtly hidden in the pinstripes: “FUCK YOU.”

Big fights are almost always sold this way: the two protagonists are brought together to exchange nasty words, in hopes of making it seem as if they really can’t stand each other, and really can’t wait to give the viewing public its money’s worth. In the case of Mayweather and McGregor, the animosity was even less convincing than usual. These two, coming from entirely different sports, are not old rivals but new business partners; it just so happens that the business they are in requires them, eventually, to consummate their joint venture by putting on gloves and throwing punches.

Even so, when Mayweather and McGregor traded insults, each competing to be more contemptuous than the other, they said the kinds of things that other, more inhibited athletes are regularly punished for saying. McGregor called Mayweather a “bitch,” and ridiculed his backpack. “What are you doing with a schoolbag onstage?” he said. “You can’t even read!” (This was a reference to an unfounded rumor, once spread by 50 Cent, that Mayweather is illiterate.) He told Mayweather, “Dance for me, boy!” He wore the basketball jersey of a player who figured into one of Mayweather’s domestic-violence cases. And, in response to criticism, McGregor joked, “I’m half-black—from the belly button down.”

Mayweather generally pretended to be too rich and too skilled to care, but, eventually, he objected, suggesting that McGregor was guilty of “racism.” (Mayweather also stepped on his message by calling McGregor a “faggot,” though he later offered a vague apology.) In an interview, Mayweather tried to elevate the fight into a crusade. “This is for a cause,” he said. “This is for the American people. This is for all the blacks, around the world.”

It’s a setup, of course: to pick a side is to support, however grudgingly, Mayweather and McGregor’s joint venture; even an earnest essay declaring this promotion “the worst of sports and the worst of society” also functioned, as its author well knew, as part of the promotional push. The fight is to be broadcast by Showtime on pay-per-view, for about a hundred dollars, which means that the promoters need only worry about the fight fans who might be tempted to buy; as long as two, or three, or even four million people pay the fee, it hardly matters what the rest of the country thinks. A boxing match, unlike most programming on television, isn’t typically at risk of being cancelled in the face of public uproar.

In this fight, even one of the announcers has gotten into the act. Paulie Malignaggi, a retired boxer who had been named to Showtime’s broadcast team, has recently been embroiled in a heated (and therefore valuable) feud with McGregor, stemming from a sparring session during which McGregor either did or didn’t knock him down. On Tuesday in Las Vegas, where the fight is to be held, Malignaggi got a chance to speak with McGregor. Judging from a video that circulated on Twitter, Malignaggi’s pre-broadcast preparatory work consisted largely of a single repeated question: “Did you bring your balls, Conor?” Stephen Espinoza, who runs Showtime Sports, explained that, despite this confrontation, Malignaggi was still assigned to be a commentator on Saturday night. “There does come a point at which, even if objectivity is not in question, behavior becomes an issue,” he told one interviewer. “We haven’t gotten to that point.”

There are many people who have found this entire spectacle distasteful, and there is probably nothing that could happen on Saturday night that would satisfy any of them. In boxing, the right person doesn’t always win, or even get to compete in the big fights, and being hated is nearly as lucrative as being loved. The worst thing about boxing is that it sometimes seems no better than real life: a handful of glorious moments, a fistful of not particularly happy endings, and a general sense that prominent people don’t typically get what we think they deserve.

From another perspective, though, the rather lawless and in some ways indefensible business of boxing can seem gloriously, refreshingly unconstrained, especially compared to the increasingly anxious, eager-to-please world of narrative entertainment. There are no writers or executive producers to shape plotlines for our edification, precious few nervous executives or influential advertisers to reform or cut loose stars who behave badly. There is no guarantee that anything particularly uplifting or redemptive will transpire on Saturday night. Unlike so many of the stories we are told, this one is not a parable—at least, not on purpose. The only thing that Mayweather and McGregor can promise is to create a spectacle. It’s up to us to figure out whether we want to watch—and why.