The MayMac Tour is officially in the books. Everyone has their opinions on it, and they range from very positive to very negative. In the end though, the MayMac Tour provided lots of entertainment, and broke the ceiling for what press conferences can do. Let’s go over the good, the bad, and the ugly from the four-day press tour.
The Good
Ask yourself, what is the point of a press conference? In the MMA world, press conferences are a chance for the press to ask fighters questions. They give the fans a seat in the psyche of their favorite fighters to see where there head is at before it’s lights, camera, action. But press conferences are also beneficial for the fighter. As Conor McGregor shows us, press conferences allow for a fighter to make it on the headlines by making attractive, quoatable, and even polarizing or controversial statements. Of course, Conor isn’t the first one to use press conferences as a vehicle for this. Lastly, press conferences are great for the promoter as it gives them great material to hype the fight up.
As far as the MayMac Tour goes, it succeeded in all of these categories despite turning into a fighter vs fighter roast battle. The press were able to get a lot of great quotes and build a lot of narratives around this fight. The fans showed up in droves and certainly got their money and time’s worth. The fighters were given ample time to say what they wanted to say. Showtime will have lots of great footage to use for promotional material.
However, press conferences are 99% entertainment and only 1% substance relating to the fight itself. The only real tangible things we can take from the press conference is how the fighters look when they’re side-by-side. As we may have guessed – Conor is the bigger man. He’s not much taller than Floyd, but his frame is much bigger. As far as “x fighter is under x fighter’s skin” … I don’t think we really got any answers. Conor and Floyd are masters at the mental warfare.
The Bad
Even though I largely enjoyed the four-stop press conference, there were certainly some bad moments. Most of these took place during the third stop in Brooklyn. Even though the New York stop was highly anticipated, it was by far the worst. Not only were the efforts from Conor and Floyd cringeworthy, as they both ventured into areas that the crowd just didn’t get behind, but the production of the event was seriously lackluster. The conference started about 2 hours late, and the audience had a real hard time hearing anything the fighters were saying. This contributed to an event that should largely be forgotten.
I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention the potential for this press tour hurting the overall success of the fight. After all, a lot of media has voiced their opinions regarding the event. Especially the hardcore boxing fans that originally saw this fight as a circus-act. The 4-day long roast tour certainly didn’t help convince those individuals.
The Ugly
As far as ugly goes, this is pretty obvious. Pretty much anywhere you look you see comments from the media about “racist” and “homophobic” and even “misogynistic” elements to the press conference. Personally, I’m not taken back by it. I don’t car that Floyd called Conor a f*ggot, and I don’t care that Conor made some comments that could be taken to be racist. After all, these fighters are up on the stage to make headlines, entertain the fans, and ultimately try to one-up each other. It was rather predictable that the two would escalate into pretty personal matters.
One of the big highlights surrounding the MayMac Tour has been Conor McGregor’s call out of Stephen Espinoza, Showtime executive vice president. While these highlights are entertaining and certainly show the bravery of Conor, I worry that they might be the beginning of a long-running feud. If Conor ever finds himself doing extended business with Showtime, this feud could back back to bite him.
I have thousands of more comments about the MayMac Tour, but everyone is talking it into the ground. I am very very excited for the fight. As an MMA and Conor McGregor fan, I’m delighted to see one of our guys do so well up on the big stage in the biggest fight in combat sports history. Thanks for reading!
