Filed under: News, UFC

(This story first was published at USATODAY.com.)

LAS VEGAS – LAS VEGAS – OK, Floyd Mayweather and Conor McGregor – enough now.

Saturday night’s culmination of a two-month promotional spectacle wasn’t a sham or a total farce, wasn’t an embarrassment to boxing or the worst thing to befall combat sports. It was actually quite good at times, really good at others. But, please, enough now.

No rematch, no do-over, no more circuit of coarse promotion and ballyhoo. Thank you, you gave us something to talk about during these quiet days of summer swelter and filled a hole in the sporting calendar. In return, we forked over our money so you could each pocket nine figures to spend on whatever your heart chooses.

Floyd Mayweather and Conor McGregor

Mayweather-McGregor was always going to be more like a soap opera than a sporting event, months of anticipation building up to a nerve-jangling crescendo. It wasn’t the greatest battle in history, but it was interesting enough, and as season finales go, it had its moments.

McGregor, stepping over from MMA and the UFC, was a worthy contender and a plucky loser, fearless in his attacking intent before ultimately running out of steam as the rounds wore on. He landed some fine shots and Mayweather, as he vowed to do, came forward far more than usual and took up the fight.

“I could have sat back and counterpunched and made it boring,” Mayweather said. “I didn’t do that. I felt like I owed the fans a last hurrah.”

The result was never in serious doubt, not even when McGregor won the first three rounds on the scorecards of most observers, if not two of the judges, who the Irishman decried as “biased” afterward.

But it will give us enough to talk about around the water cooler today, and, just like the big network blockbuster series, that will be it – on to something else.

It didn’t answer any significant questions about the merits of boxing compared to MMA, or indeed Mayweather compared to McGregor.

Conor McGregor

“It was a bit of fun, right?” McGregor said. “I have to say I enjoyed it. The boxing game is a lot different than the mixed martial arts game, from everything, the approach to it.”

Mayweather racked up his 50th fight as a pro, very convincingly as it turned out, after a few early flurries of excitement from his much younger opponent. He is now, at 40, and always will be, a vastly superior boxer to McGregor, who would be similarly advanced if the fight took place inside the octagon.

The real question that was answered was about us – the public, the media, and what gets us riled up. Beyond any doubt, it is the show of sports rather than the sports themselves that fit that criteria, that we like talking about, and listening to threats of sporting violence and vicious verbal putdowns more than watching punches thrown and knockdowns recorded.

We enjoyed the fight, but without the intro and intrigue it would have been an incomplete story for most. Social media and modern television coverage have peeled back the curtain so much that viewers, if it is done right, get invested on a far deeper level than simply being curious spectators of an athletic contest.

The promotion wasn’t done nicely or with any degree of class. But with the object being to make as much money as possible, it was indeed done right.

Conor McGregor and Floyd Mayweather

Of course, there will always be a hardcore for whom the delicate intricacies of fight-game tactics matter above all – and even those weren’t shortchanged here. But that wasn’t the audience that Mayweather or McGregor, master promoters both, targeted in this instance, nor was it the one it got. It got the broadest and most varied television viewership of all, which will contribute to an extraordinary number of pay-per-views that will further enrich both. The only marketing mistake likely came with the ticket prices, set so exorbitantly that there were more than 6,000 empty seats in the arena, though the real money, in truth, comes from the pay-per-views.

Mayweather has sold fights better than anyone ever, and even if the product has rarely produced the promised thrills it hasn’t stopped the masses from coming back. In terms of entertainment, this one came closer than most to what the hype machine prepared us for.

That is why it is a good time for him to walk away from the sport, as he says he intends to do now – and a good time for us to latch onto the next hot-button topic.

For complete coverage of “The Money Fight: Floyd Mayweather vs. Conor McGregor,” check out the MMA Events section of the site.

Filed under: News, UFC