The Show Must Go On: It's All About "Money", Baby...

Two stories of the same ilk about sports going on right now, one which will apply to the title with the quotation marks, one without...

First:

Tonight is probably The Superfight of the Year.  Floyd Mayweather is going into another production number, but he has decided to actually allow his title as "The One" to be disputed by a young Mexican fighter, undefeated and with enough power that, if he connects, anyone could be in trouble, Saul "Canelo" Alvarez.

Mayweather is 44-0, and Undisputed Pound-For-Pound.  Mayweather is a showman, believing on putting on a show for 12 rounds with elusive skills unheard of (if you believe the rhetoric) in the ring.

Alvarez is 42-0-1, and will be the crowd favorite tonight, partially because of Mexican fans and partially because Mayweather is such a freaking jerk.

That said, don't fool yourself...  This thing goes to form, and Mayweather wins -- hook or crook, he wins, and the cards will make it flattering for Mayweather.  I'm thinking of the order of 116-112 (eight rounds to four), with possibly a point closer if Alvarez can actually connect and put Mayweather where a lot of us would like see him, on his ass.

Mayweather, understanding he needs a mega-fight, decided even to give Canelo most of the weight advantage, agreeing to fight at a catch-weight (an agreed weight outside the known weight divisions) of 152 pounds.

But let's not kid ourselves...

This is in Las Vegas.  This is at The Home of the Champion, the MGM Grand.  Mayweather has all the pieces in his back pocket.  This is Mayweather's eighth consecutive fight in the MGM Grand, and tenth in Las Vegas.

If you think this is any accident, I point you to this exchange I had with Keith Kizer, the chairman of the Nevada State Athletic Commission, surrounding the Mayerweather-Cotto fight, just before Mayerweather went to jail.

And if you wonder why Kizer is so dismissive of my demands that Nevada law had to be enforced and that Floyd Mayweather had (against Cotto) and has, now, no business with a boxing license (for his domestic violence conviction and jail time), I want to give you some figures:

• According to Jay Wood, the Vice-President of the MGM Race and Sports Book, this fight may well have a (legitimate Vegas) handle (the amount of money bet) of at least $10,000,000.  That number is unheard of since the days of Mike Tyson in boxing!!!  (Many smaller bets are coming in on Alvarez, the big institutional money (6-figure bets are not uncommon), at least as of the ESPN post I grabbed it from, is hard Mayerweather money.)
• The fight's tickets sold out in one hour.  TWENTY MILLION DOLLARS face value of tickets.  The secondary market places this fight as only second to The Super Bowl for ticket scalpers/resellers.
• With the cut of the pay-per-view money, Mayweather is already slated at $40,000,000 for the fight, which could become ONE HUNDRED MILLION.
• To give you an idea of how much money is coming in to Las Vegas this weekend, I decided to pull up (even though reservations for tonight are no longer available), the old reliable Motel 6.  There's a Motel 6 basically adjacent to the MGM Grand.  Rooms for tonight (when they were available):  $123.49 ...  That's only slightly below New Year's Eve levels...

Need to go on as to why I think this is so simple?  I could even see Alvarez getting screwed Pacquiao-Bradley style (and I do think Mayweather had an arm in that as well -- and succeeded in it even beyond his wildest imagination when Marquez put Pacquiao's lights out in dramatic fashion in Manny's next fight) and then a rematch that could even get MORE "Money".

Which leads me to the second story of this weekend, one getting abjectly buried by Our National Religion and "Money"...

The America's Cup.

Yes, my old stomping grounds of San Francisco, CA, are the hosts, this week, of the fabled America's Cup yachting races.

A quick primer:

The America's Cup is a long challenger's tournament where yachting teams bring yachts to the home waters of the current Cup champion (currently, Larry Ellison's Oracle Team USA of San Francisco, CA) to race off over an extended period to gain the right to face the champion in the America's Cup final.

What has happened is a disgrace to the America's Cup of such epic proportions that I have serious doubts America may sniff this Cup anytime in the foreseeable future.

Emirates Team New Zealand won the challenger's tournament, and is currently wiping the floor with Ellison's Oracle Team USA.

Eight races have been run in the finals.  Emirates Team New Zealand leads Oracle Team USA, after an Oracle win this morning (the afternoon race was called off because of San Francisco's rather interesting winds kicking up again past the accepted safety limits), 6 points to 2.  (9 points wins the America's Cup, and the right to defend/hold it the next time.  The schedule of defenses has become a bit more unreliable.)

Oops, did I say 6 to 2??

I meant 6 to ZERO.

Yes, Oracle Team USA has won two races, but were penalized two races (two wins) in the biggest cheating scandal in the history the Louis Vuitton Cup.

Ellison's team was fined $250,000, had three members expelled from the America's Cup, and was penalized their first two wins of the final for adding excess weight to their catamaran in a warm-up tournament.

CAN SOMEONE PLEASE EXPLAIN TO ME WHY THE LOUIS VUITTON CUP IS NOT ALREADY IN NEW ZEALAND BY DEFAULT?

Oh...  that's right...  The same reason that Floyd Mayweather is allowed to fight, ever again...

Money.

And that's my point of joining these two stories...  Maybe not to the scope of a Mayweather fight, but you can imagine the big money yacht-catamarans that are racing in San Francisco Bay have brought in hotel revenue and the like to a city whose #1 industry is travel and tourism.

But it's all about "The Benjamins", baby...  right???

And you wonder why I'm so disgusted...