Circuses Abound as Bread Goes Undistributed
Even farcical sporting events are now capable of keeping us distracted & docile
Floyd Mayweather Jr. (L) boxes Logan Paul
In an America increasingly divided by haves & have nots, the have nots continue to shell out cash to the wealthy for the privilege of being distracted by them from the misery of our daily lives. In today’s America, even farcical sporting events are now capable of keeping us distracted & docile.
Former world champion boxer Floyd Mayweather Jr. boxed social media star Logan Paul Sunday night. They charged fans a lot of money to watch it, and both walked away with tens of millions from the exhibition after eight rounds ring work.
Their corporate bosses will make even more from the spectacle.
I have space in my sporting heart for neither love nor hate when it comes to this demeaning circus-act. If people wanted to watch a kid who got famous mocking suicide victims and Japanese culture fight an unrepentant woman-beater, that’s their business. Paying for the nonsense, however, is incomprehensible to me.
Most media reporting on this theater uncritically, all but ignoring - as they usually do - both men’s atrocious actions outside of the ring, however, is to all of our detriment. I’m all for covering nonsense, in and out of sport, but doing so without context or comment is simply doing capitalists’ work for them - hyping up their flimsy products while ignoring the more weighty issues connected to them.
In terms of the athletic competition of it all, the contest went about how most knowledgeable observers might have predicted. Mayweather out-classed Paul.
The all-time great boxer landed big single shots, repeatedly, but the younger, much larger opponent was able to absorb those punches from the small man and stay standing until the final bell. Nothing surprising, there.
Mayweather is a 44-year-old junior lightweight. Paul is two decades younger and probably weighed a good 40, plus, pounds more on fight night than his opponent did. At this point in his middle-aged life, Mayweather can’t throw punches in voluminous combination and he didn’t follow-up on any of his thudding punches that stunned Paul.
Paul is a muscular punching bag and was able to use his ridiculous size advantage to take a beating, one punch at a time, from Mayweather. Still, despite his youth and size, Paul wasn’t capable of hitting back and doing any damage to the retired and comparably tiny Mayweather because he doesn’t possess adequate boxing skill.
We’re very close to full-on Colosseum mode, here, guys. If the two highest-paid boxers of 2021 end up being the participants in a non-sanctioned, un-judged bout between a tiny retired fighter too old to still compete and an unskilled lunkhead who is famous for frat humor videos, it doesn’t say anything all that flattering about we value and devote our resources to in modern American culture.
In our society, circuses are making a comeback. Most of us are still waiting for the bread.