Down Goes Fraziah...

A guy once suggested, “All the world’s a stage, and all the women and men are merely fucking around on it.” I might have made up part of that, but hey, tough shit. Willie’s dead and if he lodges a complaint, I’ll meet him somewhere in hell. Yeah, me and Will; man to man, mano a mano, drink for drink. I wonder what that fine swine of a Brit playwright will be swilling. Probably some type of Meade or ale. Clearly there would have been no scenes of thee Shakespeare and some built-blonde chick cavorting in a two-piece at some Sandals Resort in the Channel Islands. Just two pairs of eyes blazing a hole in each other as they quaffed their respective elixir of love and did justice to Eros; the one that would do the trick. Yeah, two of those Swansea-shaken-not-stirred Sex on the Moors and Willy is as limp as a steamed leaf of spinach. And, Juliet has given up and had her head down in some German bloke’s lap all night. She’s in full Kate the Shrew mode, bitching about poor Willie’s whip being not worth the while. Ahhh…Who cares?

What do we care about today? I DON’T KNOW! Let’s see, for fuck’s sake. OK, anything in sports? Hmmm. Says here that some semi-crazed, scraggly-bearded, tattooed, Irish freak who makes a living screaming, along with an ability to punch, kick, bite, scratch and hiss at all comers, picked a fight with billion-dollar baby, Floyd Mayweather II. He’s the son of Floyd Mayweather I. They have their own father-son history that is a match for Lear, but we digress. Floyd the 2d is truly one of the greatest fighters that ever…lived? Can we say ‘lived’? He’s not dead. I don’t know…too many grammatical rules. So let’s go with the ole standby ‘one of the greatest pound-for-pound’ fighters to…fight? Going with that. And why, you ask, should some screaming Irish back-alley fighter be in a ring with Floyd? You really ask that in this jaded day of making money off of freak shows and the like? Of course, that is ridiculous. We have been making money off freak shows since back in the day. Hello, Ali vs Andre the Giant. Hell, the greatest freak impresario, P.T. Barnum, blurted out about audiences, “you are the dumbest fucks I ever seen.” No, he did not make that statement as far as we know. He just opined, that 'a sucker is born every minute.' I just juiced it up a bit for you. Sue me.

The answer is: money. Plain and simple. The money flows in many different directions and from many sources. And, it is what fueled this freaked-out circus train. The two – ahem – fighters got in the ring and left 10 rounds later with – say what? – a guaranteed $100 mil for Floyd and $30 mil for Connor. And, that, folks is peanuts because the real money will rain down after the dust settles. Considering marketing, not to mention that 450 million patrons paid $99 for peeking rights to the pay-per-view version of this sexed-up production, the gladiators will be looking to increase their take to over $300 million.

So in the end we are left with agonizing weeks of the bullshit publicity machine puking out its guts with half-baked stories, and wildly inappropriate and irrelevant tales. These extravaganzas are prone to bringing out the ‘stupid’ in everyone. I have to say, nothing like this has ever produced a magic moment of greatness for what anyone did or said either before, during, or after such an event. At the weigh-in a few days ago, the tattooed man said of the boxer’s weight gain, ‘Oy, weight doesn’t win fights, fighting wins fights.’ OK, I was wrong, it did showcase Connor’s fine, fine talents as a 21st-century, bearded philosopher. But, other than a brain-farting contest between the brilliantly-awful Teddy Atlas (you gotta love him for so many reasons) and pundit, Stephen A. Smith, both of whom actually spent time putting the fight into a metaphor of hamburger meat vs. haute cuisine, there was ‘no there, there’ in the sense of the Spectacular. The upshot: Smith and Teddy Atlas engaged in one of the most mind-numbing exchanges about flipping burgers, ordering steaks, and skipping fries to describe a nonsensical fight they and much of the world had just witnessed. And that, as they say, is that. The night and this story mercifully end.

THE SHOW MUST GO ON!