The Floyd Mayweather vs. Conor McGregor fight is about the green, but also about black and white

In the world of combat sports, anything is possible. Even the Floyd Mayweather vs. Conor McGregor superfight, which became a reality on Wednesday. Although separated by sport, with Mayweather the pound-for-pound and pay-per-view king of boxing, and McGregor, the reigning face of the Ultimate Fighting Champion (UFC), the cross-combat sport fight between the two on Aug. 26 in Las Vegas offers what their respective sports cannot: record-breaking revenue, and a “great white hope” that has long eluded championship boxing.

Once the second-most popular sport in the U.S., boxing in its early days featured a stable of white champions —such as Jack Dempsey and Rocky Marciano — who captured the attention of white men, who then filled stadium seats for fights. With Jack Johnson, the first black heavyweight champion, who claimed the title in 1908 and held it for seven years, promoters scrambled to line up a slew of white fighters to reclaim the “world’s greatest title.”

Nearly three decades after Johnson, two bouts between Joe Louis and Max Schmeling intersected with World War II, and the geopolitical and racial dimensions of the fights made them global spectacles that were far bigger than boxing. Beginning in the 1960s, the sport witnessed a virtual disappearance of white superstars, particularly in the celebrated heavyweight division, moving Muhammad Ali to claim, “Boxing is a lot of white men watching two black men beat each other up.”

The sport’s white fan base was still strong during the golden era of the heavyweight division, and promoters scrambled to pit a white contender opposite Ali’s unapologetic display of blackness to keep their attention. Yet, while Jerry Quarry and George Chuvalo made for dramatic promotions that capitalized on race and the black vs. white binary, Ali always came out on top. Gerry Cooney, the heavyweight division’s last viable great white hope, was knocked out in 1982 by the superior fighter Larry Holmes in a highly anticipated fight shamelessly promoted around race and allegations of “reverse racism.”

With no great white American hope in the ring, and no promising contender on the horizon, boxing is still without what it needs to capture the attention of the coveted white male fan base. McGregor, far more the mixed martial artist than boxer, offers what the sport has long fantasized about: a brash, charismatic showman outside of the ring who not only talks a good game, but delivers by way of victories and the brutal knockouts fans crave. Especially the legions of white male fans who have come to adore him and flock to the UFC en masse to see his fights.

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