Did you really spend fifty bucks to watch Mike Tyson fight Roy Jones Jr. ?
We're in kind of a dead period in the world of Sports. Yes, there's the NFL and college football, but because of Covid-19, we don't know what games will be played until they actually are played. The NFL has had to move some Sunday games to Monday and then to Tuesday nights. In college football, Florida State has postponed their last two games within a few hours of kickoff. Saturday, Ohio State, Oklahoma and Cincinnati all lost games. We've even seen head coaches Nick Saban and Ryan Day be diagnosed with Covid-19.
Normally we would have NBA and NHL games to help pick up the slack. They would keep us occupied and somewhat interested during the week. But, this is 2020 and nothing is normal, including sports. Those leagues just finished their last season about a month ago. Remember the big championship celebrations that didn't occur in Los Angeles and Tampa? I guess we'll see those leagues in 2021...maybe.
That leaves a big gap in the sports schedule. It leads to a lot of fake, made for television, kind of sports events.
Friday, we saw Phil Mickelson team up with Charles Barkley to play a round of golf against Steph Curry and Peyton Manning. I know last year's post-Thanksgiving event with Tiger, Phil, Peyton and Tom Brady was a big ratings success, but that should have been a one-time thing...especially when you don't have Tiger involved again. But, with nothing else going on, why not give it another go? I hear Phil showed why a professional golfer can crush two very good amateurs, even saddled with a schlub player like Chuck. I use the word hear because I didn't see one second of the show. It was naptime, although I might have slept better if I had it on in the background.
Now Friday's event was just the warm-up for the crap that happened two nights ago, at the Staples Center, in Los Angeles.
Legendary boxers, Mike Tyson and Roy Jones Jr. took to the ring. Both men were considered among the all-time greats of their sport. The keyword in the last sentence is "were" because these dudes are now fifty-four and fifty-one years old. Tyson's last bout was in June of 2005...fifteen years ago. Doing the math, he was thirty-nine at the time and he should have retired long before that. Jones has continued his boxing career. He fought in 2018. Yeah, he also should have retired a decade or two earlier, but Roy needed the paychecks.
Talking about paychecks, you had to give up a chunk of yours to watch this exhibition. Tyson vs Jones is a pay-per-view event that cost $49.95 to check out. That's right, almost fifty bucks to watch two dudes in their fifties try to beat the shit out of each other. Well, actually, it's not even that because since it's an exhibition, no heavy potential knockout blows were allowed. REALLY? Fifty bucks for that? Let me say that again....FIFTY BUCKS!!!
Here's how little interest I had in this exhibition....I didn't find out about this until last Monday. Then, I thought it was scheduled for Friday night. I had planned to write about this as a that day preview, but didn't get around to it and decided to blow it off. But, luckily, I found that I had the date wrong and could still work this piece as a post-fight critique of the exhibition and the fools who paid to see it. Win/win...or maybe lose/lose...I haven't decided yet.
I know there were six other bouts on the card, including one featuring former NBA player Nate Robinson, which I'm not sure makes it better or more of a farce, but the only one that matters is the main event. I also know that plenty of people paid to watch this, so I really need to know why? If you did, what was your mindset that made you spend your money in this fashion? Seriously, why did you do this? What made you decide to make this purchase? Look...let's pretend you're huge baseball fans. Two teams decide to have an old-timers game with former players now in their fifties. Are you paying fifty dollars to watch that? So why this?
To paraphrase Pete Townshend...Who are you (and why)...I really wanna know! Who...who...who..are you?!!
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