A Night at the Fights: Collective Amnesia

The purchase is non-refundable, non-transferrable and the end of any discussion. Perhaps one of the advantages of the major, team oriented sports not just in the United States but the rest of globe as well is the fact that even the most wretched stink bomb of an overmatched game takes at least more than a few minutes to materialize. Whether it’s touchdowns, goals, fast breaks, hat tricks, test batting averages or home runs, not much of them seal and return our investment in a matter of seconds. It’s not always down to factors such as age and experience because the feeling of a ripoff is the same to just about all of us. Immaterial feelings such as buyer’s remorse or mere collective amnesia can have us on the receiving end of a quickie sporting event which plays Twister with our sensibilities. Brain on red, guts on blue, dead panache on green, etc. Our hindsight spins the wheel.

Although this writer is not much of a fan of MMA, he did have some interest in last Saturday night’s UFC event which was headlined by a championship contest between two women fighters. In more ways than a million, the nature of predominantly male-driven sports oftentimes reeks of humiliation and misogyny that flew past objectification long ago. We learned that Ronda Rousey trounced Cat Zingano in fourteen (14) seconds. Good for her and good for the sport of fighting, but as has been seen multitudes of times across not only in MMA but boxing as well, the feeling of having one’s pocket picked hangs high in the night sky. Fifty dollars or more for a pay TV telecast which showcased a well promoted main event that ended quicker than Albert Haynesworth could clock a forty yard sprint.

Regardless, such occurrences are but various natures of the beast. It’s not unique to MMA by any stretch. Who among us is happy to reminisce in any way about the dollars clunked back in 1988 when Mike Tyson was “supposed” to be challenged by Michael Spinks? Some fight fans were quick to break down Rousey’s fourteen second win into dollars per second in regard to the pay per view price tag. When this fight scribbler thinks back to the summer of 1988 and a trip to a local arena to watch the Tyson/Spinks bout on a large screen, the memories of Iron Mike’s 91 second demolition of Spinks pale in comparison to that of his normally ice tempered great uncle’s profanity laden tirade about what a shaft we’d just been given. As we sat on Highway 59 in Houston, I just had to stare out the window and try so very hard not to laugh. All of us have stories like this.

On the flip side of the liver shots we may experience as members of the paying public, let’s not forget the chance taken when an opportunity to see a fight live or by other means is skipped.

One last nugget of experience. As we approach the tenth anniversary of one of boxing’s most beloved bouts, please allow this journalist to share a very brief tale of collective amnesia. It’s easy to look past it now. Mother’s Day weekend, 2005. My wife and I were in Las Vegas and she saw “boxing” across the marquee at a certain Strip hotel. She encouraged me numerous times to go, but I insisted that she and Mother’s Day weekend were more important to me than anything imaginable. I felt good about my decision, but the next morning I had just a bit of guilt when casino goers in fight t-shirts couldn’t say enough great things about the fight I’d missed. It was Corrales/Castillo I. It’s been a point to be on point ever since.

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