Why Las Vegas is the perfect city to stage the Floyd Mayweather vs Conor McGregor freak show

If the detractors are to be believed and this fight really is bad for boxing, then the message hasn’t yet filtered through to the neon streets of Las Vegas, where excitement is building for Floyd Mayweather’s fight with Conor McGregor this Saturday.

Any fight involving Mayweather is guaranteed to generate interest in Vegas, a city that has long been associated with the 40-year-old veteran.

Mayweather may well be one of the richest athletes on the planet, but compared to stars like Tiger Woods and Roger Federer, he makes barely anything from endorsements. Instead, his one real endorsement is of the city of Vegas itself — with his last 15 fights all being staged here.

For years, Mayweather ruled over this city both metaphorically and literally. Almost the first thing visitors saw upon stumbling out of McCarran International Airport and into a taxi, their wallets growing lighter by the second, was the face and torso of a mean-faced Mayweather emblazoned on the side of the MGM Grand above the words: “HOME OF THE CHAMPION”.

That banner was eventually replaced after the first of Mayweather’s retirements following his forgettable farewell bout against Andre Berto, and now the Mayweather vs McGregor poster hangs there, the veteran forced to share the billing in the city he has come to call home.

Worse, his face isn’t even the first face tourists see on the short journey from the runway to the Strip. Unlike Mayweather and his strategic lack of endorsements, McGregor has started to work out just how lucrative his fledgling brand is over the past 24 months. He now readily lends his name to big companies — including Anhueser-Busch InBev, Beats Electronics and Budweiser — and so his bearded face stares down from dozens of advertising boards high up above East Tropicana Avenue.

In fact, although he hails from a completely different sport — not to mention a completely different nation — McGregor seems the heir apparent to Mayweather’s gilded Vegas throne. He may profess to adoring the sport of mixed martial arts to an almost demented degree (“there is no talent here, this is hard work, this is an obsession,” runs one of his oft-repeated soundbites) but that hasn’t stopped him from abandoning his career in the UFC to chase the dollars in the ring.

McGregor may love mixed martial arts — but he enjoys taking risks more. Here in Vegas, people are aware of that, and he is already revered for it. “Mayweather has always been the best, but McGregor is just so damn cool,” a fan called Tyler, stood in the atrium of the MGM Grand admiring the boxing ring they have put up to promote their closed circuit viewing parties on the night of the fight, told the Independent on Monday.

He’s stood with a friend, kitted out in a ‘The Money Team’ hoodie, Mayweather’s extortionately expensive lifestyle brand, but will not be cheering for the veteran on Saturday evening. “I’ve supported Mayweather in all his other fights but his last couple were pretty flat, so I guess Conor is the one generating the hype. It would be special to see him win.”

Even for a city as synonymous with spectacle as Las Vegas, those in town seem especially excited for this fight, with both men due to make their ‘Grand Arrival’ on Tuesday before the final press conference a day later.

Here — in between the caterwauling down-and-outs, the slow-moving throngs of tourists, the squinting men handing out escort cards, the fading blondes waiting patiently for photographs and the yellow-shirted police officers side-eying them warily — the freak show feels a relatively respectable sporting event. More than that: it might just make some sense.

For only in a city with the largest strip of land-based casinos in the world, in a state where the success of the gambling industry means residents don’t have to pay personal income tax, would this fight seem like a natural fit. Sure, Leonard Ellerbe and Dana White would almost certainly have sold out Dublin’s Aviva Stadium or similar, but Vegas was the only ever candidate to stage this crazy contest.

It seems eminently appropriate that even the bookmakers, who tend to wind up smelling of roses regardless of the result, are nervous of sustaining a massive hit come Saturday night. Nick Bogdanovich, the director of trading for William Hill, this week admitted that his company have taken 16 times more bets on McGregor, with an upset likely to result in “a good seven-figure loss”.

“I think there will be some late Mayweather money but not enough,” Bogdanovich nervously told CBS this week. “I knew there would be money on McGregor — they bet him heavy in UFC — but never in a million years did I think it would be this kind of money.”

And when McGregor’s maniacal countrymen begin descending on the Strip in force later this week, piling even more money on their idol, their nerves will only grow.

It’s unusual for a fight to involve quite so much risk. Everybody has something at stake, from the two men involved who may stand to earn millions but whose reputations are firmly on the line, to the UFC, to the bookmakers, to the fans — who must decide whether $100 (or £20 and a very late night for UK fans) is a fair price to pay for what is likely to be a breathless game of cat and mouse.

With so much on the line then, Vegas is the perfect location for a fight that promises so much, but is more than likely to underwhelm, or disappoint, or frustrate. Not that anybody here cares. Regardless of the result, everybody knows they are guaranteed a show.