If it had been the fight, they would have stopped it.

The colorful mixed martial artist Conor McGregor was the clear choice of the Brooklyn public as the news media circus for his fight against boxing legend Floyd Mayweather Jr. arrived at a nearly full Barclays Center on Thursday night.

Shirtless beneath a long white fur coat, McGregor swaggered along the runway. Much of what he said cannot be quoted because of its heavy reliance on obscenity. Many of his bons mots were little more than blunt vulgarities.

It mattered little. The thousands in attendance roared their approval at McGregor’s every utterance, their enthusiasm apparently undimmed by an hour-and-a-half delay to the start of the festivities or by a sound system that swallowed some of the comments made on stage.

Many in the stands were wrapped in Irish flags, leaving little doubt as to their loyalty to the McGregor, an Irishman. (Perhaps in an effort to win some of them over, Mayweather arrived draped in an Irish flag of his own.)