On Wednesday, Floyd Mayweather
announced that he was
un-retiring, after nearly two years away from boxing. Despite the fact
that he recently turned forty, he is still widely considered to be one
of the most skilled boxers alive. His record is 49–0, and on August 26th
he will seek his fiftieth boxing victory, against an opponent who is not
a boxer at all: Conor McGregor, the brash U.F.C. champion from
Ireland. McGregor’s chosen sport is mixed martial arts, which allows a wide range
of striking and grappling techniques; he has never competed in a
professional boxing match. But he is an élite trash-talker and a
worldwide
celebrity—and,
therefore, a lucrative opponent. The fight will be broadcast on
pay-per-view,
perhaps at
a price of a hundred dollars. Mayweather and McGregor could
earn hundreds of millions of dollars, even though virtually no one expects
the fight to be competitive. (One sports book priced Mayweather at -800,
meaning that a bettor would need to risk eight hundred dollars on him in
order to win a hundred.)

For a time, the executives at the U.F.C. seemed
skeptical of this matchup, perhaps because they didn’t love the idea of seeing
their star humbled by an outsider, and perhaps because they are still
trying to establish mixed martial arts as a legitimate sport—this event
is, from a purely athletic standpoint, indefensible. But in the end
Mayweather’s argument was irrefutable: a lot of people will pay us a lot
of money to watch this. Why not let them?

Boxing helps fans of other sports answer a tantalizing question: What if
there were no stringent commissioners or all-powerful league offices?
What if teams and athletes could compete however and whenever they
wanted, against whatever opponents seemed most appealing? What if
competition were arranged not by rules and rulers but by market forces?
Viewers could vote with their wallets, summoning the best matchups into
existence. Basketball fans could have as many—or as
few—Warriors-Cavaliers games as they wanted; longer playoffs, or shorter
playoffs; a college-style tournament, or a series of soccer-style
friendlies, or Olympic-style three-on-three
games.
The competitions would bend to the will of the customers.

What boxing’s free-market approach has proved, though, is that not every
fan is equally discerning: the combined purchasing power of avid boxing
fans tends to be swamped by the purchasing power of the casual and the
curious, who are more likely to be lured in by a big name than by a
competitive match. The announcement of Mayweather vs. McGregor, for
instance, has overshadowed the fight scheduled for Saturday night, on
pay-per-view, between Andre Ward and Sergey Kovalev, the two best
light-division heavyweights in the world. They fought once
before, in 2016, and Ward
was awarded a victory that many observers thought Kovalev deserved; with
any luck the rematch will
be similarly tense and rough, with a more decisive ending. But it’s no
great surprise that only boxing obsessives seem excited for it.

Still, the boxing fans who argue that Mayweather vs. McGregor will be a
travesty should not be too surprised when someone responds, not
unreasonably, that the entire sport is a travesty. (If we are talking
about what should or shouldn’t happen, we should at least consider the
possibility that no one should be punching anyone in the head at all.)
And of course, there is nothing wrong with spectacle; the possibility
that something strange or astonishing will occur is, after all, a big
part of the reason why fans of all sports sit through all those hours of
highly competent, somewhat boring athletic competition.

The bigger problem with Mayweather vs. McGregor is that, like the last
big Mayweather
fight—his
meeting with Manny Pacquiao, in 2015—this one may not satisfy the
gawkers who are drawn in by all the hype. If Mayweather were a different
kind of boxer, he might be counted on to deliver a queasy thrill:
destroying an inexperienced opponent the way Mike Tyson, once upon a
time, charged through dozens of lesser fighters. And if Mayweather were
a devastating puncher, more people might be wondering why the Nevada
State Athletic Commission appears willing to grant a license to allow a
boxing rookie to take his chances against one of the top athletes in the
sport. But Mayweather tends to be a smart fighter, which is to say a
cautious one; it’s been a decade since his last true knockout. (The
bizarre ending of his fight against Victor
Ortiz doesn’t really
count.) Viewers should expect a dominant display of skill, but not
necessarily a brutal one. Fans who spend money to watch the fight will
probably get what they paid for, but once the fight is over, they may
realize that they got most of what they paid during the pre-fight
build-up.

This is a cynical explanation for a cynical affair. And some might argue
that, despite the short-term profits, this event could hurt the sport in
the long term. In theory, a sufficiently disappointing fight could
damage the sport’s business model, making casual fans reluctant to buy
the next big boxing pay-per-view. But, then, that’s what people said two
years ago, in the aftermath of Mayweather vs. Pacquiao. And now here we
are, gearing up for a fight that seems even less competitive, and that
could be even more lucrative. Two people want to fight, lots of people
seem to want to watch, and if no one is in a position to prevent it from
happening, perhaps that’s as good an argument as any that the
free-market world of boxing can still work pretty well. Maybe this fight
makes sense—as much sense, that is, as any fight ever makes.