Floyd Mayweather Jr. hits Conor McGregor in a super welterweight boxing match Saturday, Aug. 26, 2017, in Las Vegas.Isaac Brekken/The Associated Press
In the end, the Floyd Mayweather-Conor McGregor fight was none of the things we expected – not a blowout, not a shock and definitely not a bore.
It was instead a good reminder of a basic life lesson – stick to what you know.
Mayweather has spent just about every one of his 40 years in a boxing gym, being trained by a family of pros. In the midst of a hiatus from mixed-martial arts, McGregor's been at this for a little more than two months.
The difference was evident and decisive. Mayweather retreated at first, wore down his callow opponent in the middle, then pounced in the later rounds. It finished in a tenth round technical knockout after a tsunami of shots put McGregor, dazed and defenceless, against the ropes.
"I thought it was close," McGregor said afterward.
Well, no.
But nor was it an embarrassment. Facing one of the canniest pugilists of any generation, McGregor was value for money.
The tone was set decisively in the run-up. Usually, that would mean the entrances. They were notable – McGregor dancing around in the ring to 'Mo' Money Mo' Problems'; Mayweather entering in a hooded, zippered bodysuit that made him look like the proprietor of a sex dungeon. But that wasn't it.
It was instead referee Robert Byrd's unusually lengthy scolding as he instructed the fighters.
"This will be a clean, professional fought bout. Under boxing rules," Byrd said in part, enunciating as you would to an unruly classroom. "I'm not going to wrestle with you. I'm not going to grapple with you. When I say stop, stop."
Byrd was grappling with them by the second round.
McGregor came storming out at the beginning, sprinting across the ring to deliver a wild flurry. Mayweather came up smiling at the cheek of it.
Those first three rounds were good times for McGregor. He was far and away the aggressor. He landed a couple. The crowd – many of whom seemed to anticipate a quick end, either way – sat back down.
It wasn't pretty stuff. Seemingly unable to sublimate his MMA muscle memory, McGregor repeatedly pounded Mayweather on the top of the head with a balled fist when he got in close. In clinches, he tried to get on top of his smaller opponent, using his greater weight as leverage.
McGregor likes to call himself "an Irish gorilla." That's what it looked like as Mayweather ducked in and McGregor mounted him – a monkey climbing on top of an unusually quick turtle. Referee Byrd was repeatedly forced to drag one man off the other.
After four rounds, the tenor began to shift. McGregor began sucking wind, his hands began the long, slow creep down to his waist. Some of the braggadocio remained – a tongue stuck out here, a bandy-legged stroll around the ring there. But it wasn't convincing.
Mayweather – who'd never looked in the least bit troubled – began to advance.
In the ninth, he took over.
It's been years since he's knocked someone out. That's not Mayweather's thing. Rather, he makes you miss and then he bleeds you on points.
But McGregor had shot his bolt early and Mayweather could feel it. By the end of the ninth, McGregor's arms fell uselessly to his sides. Mayweather peppered him. He may be underpowered, but he still does this for a living. If you invite Mayweather to take your head off, he will.
If McGregor accomplished anything on Saturday – aside from making as much as a hundred million dollars – it was proving that he can take a shot.
He survived the ninth after taking a good dozen of them. He even managed to come out swinging in the tenth.
But by that point, the fight had gone longer than any other of his combat career. McGregor was utterly spent. Mayweather closed in and picked him apart. Byrd jumped on McGregor once more, this time to save him.
As the referee held on to the fighter, McGregor appeared to say, "I was okay. I'm just sayin'."
He most definitely was not.
Afterward, McGregor was at first contemplative.
"(Mayweather's) composed. He's not that fast and not that powerful, but boy is he composed."
By the end of his remarks, he'd worked himself into high dudgeon about what he felt was Byrd's quick trigger finger.
"He should've let me keep going. I was just a little fatigued."
There will be few serious takers for that line of argument.
For Mayweather, it all had a very workaday feel. He was not stretched at any point. He spent much of the match smiling. At the end of the fifth round, he pushed McGregor, and Byrd reached out and pushed him, and Mayweather smirked at the stupidity of it all. It was that sort of night – scrappy and formless.
Mayweather definitively retired after the match – "This was my last fight, ladies and gentlemen. My last fight." – but he's done that before.
He gave McGregor some wafer-thin compliments – "He's a lot better than I thought he was."
What was a bit remarkable was what he chose to begin his remarks with – an apology.
"I think we gave the fans what they wanted to see," Mayweather said. "I owed them for the Pacquiao fight."
That, of course, was his last big pay-per-view draw – an unwatchable, high-priced 2015 slog with another all-time great. If there is a knock on Mayweather, it is that he is too careful, in and out of the ring.
That's what Saturday night was for him – a chance to prove that he enjoys (a limited amount of) risk. And we're not talking about the result.
Had this event gone completely sideways – a knockout after a minute, a line brawl in the ring, riots in the stands, some other dumb shenanigans – that would have been the final memory of Mayweather's perfect professional career.
Instead, carrying someone who had little idea what they were doing, Mayweather managed to turn Saturday into something watchable, something that rose to the level of boxing.