Like the dark, abandoned house in a horror movie, the upcoming Mayweather-McGregor fight feels like something you know you should stay away from but you’re inexplicably drawn to exploring, like the film’s protagonist. If you haven’t heard (and please share your magic if that’s true), Floyd Mayweather and Conor McGregor will square off in a cross-sport spectacle of a fight on August 26th. TV networks, Vegas sports books, and the internet have been abuzz about the fight for months now. A little less talk and a lot more action may be too much to ask for these fighters, but (thankfully) it’s almost time for the main event. And, despite how many reasons there are to tell me I shouldn’t, it’s a fight I will be watching.
 
My dad was a multiple-time Colorado Golden Gloves champion, so I’ve grown up watching boxing. Some of my earliest memories are of my family gathered at my Uncle Steve’s house to watch Pay-Per-View bouts. We still get together for the big fights and this will be one of them. The MayMac fight is boxing in name, but only half so when considering the tale of the tape. In one corner, you have the greatest fighter of this generation coming out of a short retirement at 40 years old. In the other, you have a UFC fighter who has never boxed professionally in his life. Given all that, I was curious about my dad’s thoughts on the fight. He and I both thought the same thing: we know it’s gimmicky and corny, but we still want to watch it.
 
The fight itself is unconventional. There should be little reason to watch a man who’s spent less than a year to try and dethrone a 49-0 professional boxer. On paper, Mayweather has the upper hand in almost every category. Mayweather is a defensive mastermind who practically wrote the shoulder roll textbook. His counterpunching ability can’t be matched, nor can his speed. He obviously gets the nod for experience, durability, and endurance, considering Mayweather breezes through 12 rounds of boxing while McGregor has fought past the third round of a UFC fight only once. The only area where McGregor takes the lead is power. MayMac is a crossover event, not a boxing match. If you want to watch a great, true boxing match this year, you should be much more excited for Canelo Alvarez vs. Gennady ‘Triple G’ Golovkin on September 16th.  Yet the hype for MayMac is much bigger.
 
The promotion surrounding the fight is outlandish. As is always the case with press conferences and weigh-ins both in boxing and the UFC, the fighters talked trash and put on a show.  But the number of stops they’ve made on the promo tour, the fake scuffles and inane comments, the back-and-forth in interviews and on social media has all gotten old. At times it feels like a practical joke, like both fighters are feuding to sell tickets, only to simply shake hands on fight night and run away with their riches.  

Speaking of riches…the money in this fight is another reason you feel like maybe you shouldn’t watch. Tickets at the arena ranged from $500 to $10,000, not unheard of for a Vegas fight, but not at all reasonable either. Watching from home will run you $99 on PPV. Going to a movie theater to see it costs $40 a ticket. When it’s all said and done, Mayweather will pocket $300 million, McGregor will take $100 million, and UFC will get a cut of its own. Heck, they’ve even added a belt to fight over. While it’s not a championship title, the winner will take home ‘The Money Belt’, an alligator skin belt with 3,360 diamonds, 600 sapphires, and 300 emeralds. Both fighters love talking about how much they earn and Floyd goes by ‘Money’ Mayweather, so it’s not at all surprising.
 
Yet for all these reasons not to watch, I’m still planning on it. Why? Because the promoters and the fighters themselves tried to sell us on a spectacle, and it worked. All the hype surrounding it makes it feel like the fight of the decade. Everyone is, and will be, talking about it, so you can’t miss it. But what about the fact that it’s not really a boxing match? That factors in too. Again, Canelo vs. Triple G is going to be a better true boxing match. MayMac is something we’ve never seen before, providing a sense of novelty to the whole thing. People have long debated whether mixed-martial artists or boxers are the better fighters, so we finally get to see what happens when a man of the octagon steps in a ring. Fear of missing out strikes again.
 
But why watch a UFC fighter and a boxer go at it under boxing rules? Mayweather has the advantage in nearly every category, so he’ll win easily, right? ….right? Maybe not. It seems pretty clear cut, and I do believe that Mayweather will win handily. I don’t think McGregor has the technique or the endurance to match up, especially the longer the fight goes on. But anything can happen. There’s a chance McGregor does land a big shot to win. There’s a chance something even more wild goes down; maybe McGregor slips up and throws and errant kick or tensions boil over and the fight goes the way of a DQ. People, myself included, want to tune in to see if the unexpected happens.
 
Floyd Mayweather, Conor McGregor, UFC, all the promoters, the PPV companies, and the sports networks got me. On Saturday, August 26th, I’m giving in. I’ll be following that creepy noise like some idiot in a slasher flick. It’ll be entertaining at the very least.  A retired champion and a barely novice boxer walk into a ring…let’s hope the fight’s not a punchline.  

Sports fans have a unique connection to uniforms. Perhaps it’s simply the ability for us to feel like part of the team by wearing what the players wear. It’s not uncommon for sports fans to have a lucky jersey, or at least a favorite jersey, and if you look around the stands of any given game for every sport, you’ll see that the seats are packed with folks wearing theirs.
 
Sports uniforms have played an important and ever-present role in my fandom. There are pictures of six-year-old me playing putt-putt golf in a full-blown Rockies uniform, high socks with baseball pants and all. The Denver Broncos won their first Super Bowl soon after changing logos and redesigning their jerseys, and I proudly owned John Elway and Terrell Davis replicas in that new Broncos’ blue. All I wanted to do with my paychecks from my first job as a teenager was save up to buy a throwback Quebec Nordiques sweater. When the Denver Nuggets traded for Allen Iverson on December 19th, 2006, an A.I. Nuggets jersey shot up to the top of my Christmas wish list. The examples go on and on (my closet can attest to that). I’m always excited to see what the new gear looks like when teams redesign, so I was very eager to attend the Denver Nuggets public jersey unveiling yesterday.
 
The NBA is switching uniform suppliers for the upcoming season, moving from Adidas to Nike. With that comes a new slate of uniforms for all 30 teams. Each team will have at least four jerseys: the ‘Icon’, ‘Association’, and two alternates dubbed the ‘Athlete Mindset’ and ‘Community’ (locally inspired). The ‘Icon’ and ‘Association’ will be team-colored and white, respectively. Whereas teams have traditionally worn white at home and colors on the road, those designations are gone under the new Nike system. Instead, the home team will choose which jersey to wear for each game.
 
Of the new ‘Icon’ and ‘Association’ jerseys released thus far, there is a solid mix of teams sticking with designs close to what they were already wearing (e.g. Blazers, Bulls, Kings, Wizards) and teams trying something new (e.g. Cavs, Nuggets, Pacers). Alternates have not yet been released for any team, so time will tell whether those will resemble alternates used in the Adidas template or be something completely new and different. Additionally, eight teams (Bucks, Hawks, Heat, Hornets, Lakers, Pacers, Suns, and Warriors) will get a fifth jersey option – a ‘Classic’ or throwback jersey. It’s unfortunate that only eight teams will get throwbacks this year, especially since so many teams not on that short list have outstanding vintage jerseys. 

To continue the rollout of Nike’s new uniforms, about a hundred-plus Mile High basketball fans filed into the Denver Performing Arts Complex to see the Nuggets’ official unveiling. After entertainment from Supermascot Rocky, the Denver Nuggets Dancers, the Sky-Line Drumline, and the Elevation Dunk Squad, the focus turned to a stage in the plaza where Gary Harris and Darrell Arthur modeled the jerseys.
 
The Nuggets are shifting away from the powder blue they’ve worn since 2003, opting for a darker shade of navy blue. The old light blue still exists as an outline for the ‘DENVER’ wordmark and as part of the stripe on the side of the jersey. The Nuggets are continuing their recent trend of having the lettering and numbering rendered in two different colors, with yellow letters/white numbers on the blue jerseys and yellow letters/blue numbers on the white jersey. The collars on both new uniforms are quite well done, with the blue jersey featuring a white collar with gold trim and the white jersey featuring a navy collar with gold trim. The side panels and stripes really pop too, especially on the shorts which feature the Nuggets pickaxe logo. Two crossed pickaxes can be seen on the waistbands as well, cementing waistband logos as a key Nike jersey element.
 
The most infamous addition to the Nuggets’ jerseys, and to jerseys throughout the NBA, is the inclusion of advertisements. The Nuggets partnered with Western Union as their local sponsor, so each jersey features a ‘WU’ patch on the left chest area. The executives releasing the jersey also championed the addition of the ‘5280’ that is stitched above the jersey’s jock tag as a way to connect to the city. On paper, it’s a cool jersey element, but it won’t matter much on the court as that part of the jersey will be tucked into the shorts anyway. One thing Nike deserves credit for is that each jersey is made from about 20 recycled plastic bottles. A good move from Nike and the league.
 
I enjoyed the event, but as for the jerseys themselves, I was left feeling a bit underwhelmed. The uniforms do look very clean, but perhaps even on the verge of being too plain. The Nuggets could have easily boasted the best uniforms in the entire NBA had they gone with the ‘Rainbow Skyline’ throwbacks they wore last season, or at least some adaptation of those. Here’s hoping that they bring the skyline back with one of the two alternates. I sort of like the shift to navy, but I really liked the powder blue, so the new shade will take some time to get used to. It’s growing on me already. As for other fans? Not so much…the response to the jerseys at the event itself was mixed, but the response on social media has been extremely negative (as social media tends to be). There are two Nuggets jerseys and a bundle from other teams that are yet to be released; fingers crossed for a good looking basketball season!