The Honor of Boxing Is at Stake

Everyone, or almost everyone, wants to be a tough guy. Americans are infinitely interested in the question of who can kick whose butt.

As a kid growing up on the New Jersey shore, I was often involved in heated debates as to who was my school’s biggest badass. Even though there was an automatic three-day suspension for fighting, this involuntary vacation was well worth the price to defend your status as someone not to be trifled with. It was a matter of honor; you had to throw hands with anyone who challenged you.

With one exception. It was not considered dishonorable to excuse yourself from a stairwell battle with a boxer. Back then, boxing was considered the supreme martial art. No one messed with boxers. That is precisely why I took up the sport.

Mike Tyson called himself “the baddest man on the planet,” and in his prime most everyone believed him. They believed that mano-a-mano, no judo moves or karate chops could defend against his superhero-like powers of pugilistic destruction.

But around the time of Tyson’s reign of terror, mixed martial arts, which permits a wide variety of striking and grappling techniques, was slowly making inroads in combat sports. In the beginning, the roster of this professional fight club circuit was made up of unscientific bouncer types like David “Tank” Abbott. Shortly thereafter, however, the Gracie clan, a family of Brazilian jiu-jitsu masters, invaded the sport. They were good-looking, non-imposing Clark Kent types. But they quickly laid bare the fact that any brawler, big or small, and no matter how hard a puncher, could be taken down and dismantled by an array of “arm bars” and other specialized holds.Little by little, Americans began to understand that when it came to street fighting, the multidimensionality of mixed martial artists rendered them more pernicious than pure pugilists. Maybe 8 out of 10 times, take it out back, and the boxer ends up on the ground. In 2010, James “Lights Out” Toney, one of the toughest and most technical boxers of our era, ventured into the octagon (the mixed martial arts equivalent of the boxing ring) against an older Randy Couture. Couture, a former wrestler, easily dispatched Toney with a submission hold in the first round. Boxers are not competitive in the octagon.

But now, the tables have been turned: A top-notch M.M.A. fighter is entering the boxing ring. Conor McGregor, the reigning lightweight and former featherweight champion of the Ultimate Fighting Championship organization, who has never boxed professionally, is poised to challenge the greatest boxer of our time, Floyd Mayweather Jr., in Nevada on Saturday night. What an insult! What a head butt to boxing!

As a longtime boxing trainer and writer, my initial reaction to this event, for which each fighter could earn more than $100 million, was a wince and a moan. What won’t “Money” Mayweather do for more money?

To be fair, there is a history of such spectacles. For example, in 1976, Muhammad Ali fought a bizarre contest against the Japanese wrestler Antonio Inoki. In a similar fight the day before, the heavyweight boxer Chuck Wepner was picked up and flung out of the ring in a free-for-all match with the wrestler Andre the Giant. But the difference between those sideshows and the bout on Saturday is that McGregor is a world-class athlete who is deadly serious about beating Mayweather at his own game.

When the fight was announced, I vowed that I would not be bamboozled into buying into this fistic vaudeville act. After all, Mayweather has shut down and taken apart the elite of the elite in boxing, the likes of Oscar De La Hoya, Canelo Alvarez and Manny Pacquiao. And I am supposed to believe that a sub-novice boxer is going to challenge this first ballot Hall of Famer?

To his credit, McGregor is a superbly conditioned fighting machine who is comfortable with extreme violence. He vows that Mayweather “will be unconscious inside four rounds.” Fans wonder, Does McGregor really think he can accomplish this? The good news is, he does; the bad news is, he is delusional.

Judging from YouTube footage, McGregor’s boxing footwork is abysmal. Like most M.M.A. fighters, his stance is too wide for boxing. He is easy to hit. He is a potent striker in the U.F.C., but the arc of his punches is rainbow wide. Wearing hefty 8-ounce mitts (in contrast to 4- to 6-ounce gloves for M.M.A.), and fighting Mayweather, a defensive wizard who can detect a punch developing when his opponent is merely thinking of it, McGregor will struggle to bring his cruel weapons to bear against him. Indeed, there are boxing cognoscenti willing to wager that McGregor won’t be able to land a single blow.

At first (and second and third) glance, this is not a competitive contest. You would have to be a boxing bozo to believe that. And yet, against my will and better judgment, I am feeling the itch of interest.

During their press tour, McGregor ruthlessly mocked Mayweather. With eyes bulging and neck veins popping, he made nasty digs at Mayweather’s wardrobe, at his size and at his intelligence. As he was pasting Mayweather with verbal blows, the demonically grinning McGregor dared his man “to do something” right then and there.

Mayweather is no dummy. He knows better than to imagine that he could actually fight the man he is going to box on Saturday, and that must be a curious feeling for a boxing icon.

Often to his fans’ chagrin, Mayweather has avoided taking risks in the ring. Against an outclassed Pacquiao, Mayweather was still content to keep moving and piling up points rather than go for the knockout. He is excessively prudent.

On Saturday, boxing begs for Mayweather to win in a dramatic fashion. For the sake of the sport, he needs to expose McGregor as a hubristic interloper. I am curious to see how Mayweather will rise to this task. A first-round knockout would fit the bill. If McGregor should manage to make a fight of it and go the distance, it will bruise both the bruising game and Mayweather’s legacy.

I have never sat on the edge of my chair with balled fists bellowing support for Mayweather. But I will be on Saturday night … if I just so happen to watch the fight.