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for-emilia · 4 years

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Adore You.

you’re a saint, enjoy x

At the beginning of their relationship, not everything was easy sailing. Of course, Dele was a premier league footballer, playing for one of the biggest clubs week in week out with little to no break time. People always tease about how ‘football is a hobby, not a career’, which of course it is a hobby too, his first true love and passion in life, even if he wasn’t getting paid he’d still continue to play, but it was more demanding than people thought. Training practically every single day, 9am-2pm, sometimes even later, a strict diet to enhance his performance that he couldn’t slip from, a rigorous recovery routine after each match, travel to and from matches all over the world.. It was tough, but he wouldn’t change it for the world. But no matter how tough it was, he’d never complain. Especially not when the actual love of his life was a healthcare professional.

Emilia didn’t like to talk about it too much, thinking it was boring to hear about and that nobody would be interested but from their first meeting Dele was enamoured. He hadn’t pushed the first few times of meeting, sensing she didn’t want to waffle on about it for ages so he moved on with a “That's amazing, lucky patients getting a right hottie looking after them!” followed by a slap on the chest from Emilia. But he never stopped thinking about it until he prompted her to talk about it one night.

“So how was work?” Dele asked as always as she kicked her shoes off at his doorway. “Erm yeah, was alright,” Emilia mumbled back, winding her arms around his waist and lifting her head up for a kiss. “Alright bad? Or just alright?” he replied sensing the waver in her voice before walking her to collapse on the sofa with him. “Eh, just alright.. better now ‘m with you” she nuzzled her head into the dip of his shoulder.

After they’d made a mess of the kitchen trying to make fajitas together (most of it Dele’s fault of course), Dele laid in bed, shirt off joggers on, watching his gorgeous girlfriend do her thing after her shower in the bathroom. He thought she was the most beautiful creature on Earth, he could watch her scrunching various creams and gels into her hair, cleansing her face, moisturizing her gorgeous long legs.. all day long. She made the most mundane tasks look like a work of art in his eyes.

“Whachu lookin’ at, creep,” she side eyed him as she sat on the top of the toilet, rubbing moisturiser into her aching bruised feet. He didn’t reply, simply just blinked up at her and lightly chewed on his bottom lip in thought. Eventually she made her way over to the bed and climbed in, scissoring her legs in and out to feel the fresh sheets against her freshly shaved legs, making Dele copy her actions to make fun of her.

Once Emilia was tucked up and scrolling through the channels on the TV, he looked over to her and asked “will you tell me about your job?”.

“What do you mean? You know I’m a HCA, Del,” she furrowed her eyebrows as she scrolled quickly past How I Met Your Mother, finally settling on one of the old Harry Potter films playing. “No like.. Tell me about what you do, what your days are like, how you got into it..” he trailed off. “I’m genuinely interested, wanna know what you’re getting up to while I’m megging winksy,” he joked referencing the video he showed her earlier that he made the groundsman send him from the training ground CCTV.

So with some reluctance at first and a few more questions, she talked to him about what she did on a daily basis, shedding light on just how ruthless and hard her job was, but how rewarding it was at the same time. He listened for as long as she was willing to speak about it, laughing along at stories of her favourite patients and kissing her on the forehead as she described the harder parts. Dele knew it was a gruelling job but he didn’t realise the extent, the day in day out physical and emotional pain she went through.

That night as she drifted asleep on his chest his heart was full like he’d not felt in a long time. He adored her, properly adored her. Dele couldn’t help but stay awake looking over her features.. her pretty long eyelashes, the curve of her cute nose, the plumpness of her lips, her beautiful wavy hair. She was the most inspiring, humble, beautiful person inside out. He thought she was a hero.

“Del.. Dele? Bamideleeeeee?” Emilia shouted through the house the next day as she got home. She knew he was already home from training from the various texts she’d received. “Dele?” she wondered again, looking on the sideboard for a note to say he’d gone out.

“Hey, pretty girl,” he spoke out from the top of the stairs, making her jump slightly, “be down in two seconds, stay there.” She wasn’t sure what he was up to but she trusted him and stayed by the door, taking the moments rest to stretch out her muscles that’d been overworked all day. Suddenly her wrist was caught in his hand and he spun her around pulling her into him, instinctively giving her a few pecks.

“So how was work?” Dele smiled at her bringing his hand up to her cheek, rubbing his thumb over her cheek repeatedly. “Yeah, alright,” she smiled smally back and leaned into his touch. “Sorry I’m home la-” her words were cut off by Dele’s hand over her mouth which she softly bit at his fingers in response. “Don’t want to hear it.”

“Come with meeeee,” he sing-songed and walked her towards the kitchen where the table was laid out ready with a meal in foil containers in the middle. “What’s this Del? We can't have a takeaway, the nutritionists will kill you, silly boy,” Emilia stopped and turned to him, pulling a sour face. “Just sit down, silly girl,” Dele taunted back, “for lunch at Enfield we had this lovely noodle dish, I thought you’d really like it so I got the chefs to put the leftovers in a container for me to bring home.. Y’know I can't cook but means we don’t have to cook tonight.”

They ate together, sharing stories of the day and laughing about various things that some of Emilia’s residents had said or jokes the lads had made in training. She was surprised at how observant Dele was, to know that she’d enjoy that dish and was thoughtful enough to bring it home for them after a long shift. “Thank you, handsome,” she kissed him as they dropped the containers in the bin on the way to the living room, tasting the soy sauce in his mouth as she kissed him.

“Wait no, come upstairs, mi amor,” he smirked, she knew he was planning something but didn’t really care when he sounded so sexy speaking Spanish to her. “Today after training I went into town and got some bits and bobs.. Lie down on the bed I’m gonna give you a massage,” Emilia looked at him a little confused but mostly intrigued. “You’re gonna give me a massage, are you? Do you even know how to?” she questioned, receiving a laugh and a little eyebrow wiggle and a request to “strip for me, mamas.”

She couldn’t lie, she was impressed with his massaging capabilities, “should’ve been a masseuse, Del.” He’d put on one of their playlists, she was pretty sure it was one of their tens of sex playlists and rap music isn’t typically played during a massage but she’d not have it any other way, it was perfect. “Christ, you don't even make this much noise when I’m bloody going down on you let alone having a massage,” Dele teased knowing fine well it wasn’t entirely true. “Can’t help it, if you keep pressing down there it’ll click really lou-.. see,” she giggled when her bones cracked under his touch, “God it feels so good.”

After her massage they showered together, to get the oil off quicker of course, besides, Dele had his own point from earlier to prove wrong. And boy did he do just that. Soon enough, Dele resumed his place on the bed, ignoring Emilia’s complains of “you’ll make the sheets soggy” (“Lover, it’s my side of the bed, it’s me that’ll suffer” “Dele, I sleep on top of you, your side is OUR side, didn’t think of that did you, big brains”) in favour of watching her go on with her night routine.

“Where’s this come from?” his girlfriend questioned looking over to see Dele’s smile. “Well you were complaining the other day that your body moisturiser was running out but you needed to find a new one for whatever reason, so when Kate was at training today she recommended that one so I went and got it,” he smiled, walking into the bathroom and moving aside a few things, “I organised it all for you too.. There’s a few refills of your hair and skin stuff there as well, did a little inventory on your behalf this morning.” She rifled through the draw and saw that he had indeed rebought some of her favourite products in the biggest sizes so she didn’t run out. He’d also cleared out the draw and put the things to use nearest the front along with categorising them into skin, face and hair. “Oh and I talked to the physios after training and they’ve written down a few stretches for you to ease your back and legs a little bit after shifts.. thought it might help,” he scrunched up his nose and stepped back to look at her properly, worried her silence meant he’d stepped a line.

“Dele…” she spoke out with the softest look on her face, “why did you do that for me?”. He stood behind her and spun them to look in the mirror together. “Because you deserve to be looked after, you spend your life looking after everyone else and now it’s my turn to look after you, yeah?” he accentuated by looking away from the mirror and turning her around to look her dead in the eyes, “I just want to make your life easier, pretty girl, you deserve it.” She nuzzled her head into his shoulder in response, not really knowing what to say in response.

“For the record, I also put new bed-sheets on and did the washing.. I know, I know, Dele Alli doing the washing, unheard of!” he made the joke so she didn’t have to, plonking her down on the bed and throwing a soft, warm t-shirt of his at her head. Her little giggle and smile let Dele know he did his job, all he ever wanted to do was make her smile, today and every day after that.

As she fell asleep cuddled up on top of him that night he couldn’t help but take her all in again, she even looked a little bit lighter in her sleep, eyebrows held higher on her face, corners of her mouth turned up slightly, eyes not as scrunched up. She was a work of art, inside and out. Dele just wanted to make her feel as cared for as she made people in need feel every day, he properly adored her.

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jawllines · 6 years

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okAY SO HERE IS a sNEAK PEEK OF BOTH WHAT THE JAMACA HARRY FIC WOULD BE AND WHAT THE ALPHA HARRY FIC WOULD BE I WILL LEAVE THESE HERE AND YOU CAN DECIDE

1. JAMIACA HARRY

Harry doesn't quite know how to feel about Y/N.

Before coming to Jamaica, he'd made a point of getting to know every single person he was aware was coming on the trip with them. From the writers, to the band, and all the techies in between. Sure, the trip would be a bonding experience no doubt but he saw it as necessary to get to know the basics about one another before they dropped everything and lived in a house together for a few months writing an album. So he took them out for drinks, invited them to his home, and they all chatted and laughed without the album even a glimmer of a subject as they got close to one another on a personal level.

He thinks ultimately that will make it easier for them to share ideas and connect in different ways throughout the process, plus he'd made a group of new friends for the time being which wasn't terrible.

However, when Harry was walking towards the den of the Jamaican house, there's a girl that he'd never seen before sat at the kitchen table with a bowl of cocoa puffs getting soggy in milk as she spooned it around, preoccupied with her phone. It makes him slow to a stop, the cinnamon candle he held in his hand nearly rolling out of it as he looks around for a familiar face to tell him who this unfamiliar face was. She hadn't noticed him yet, thumb still looming over the keyboard he can see, rolling in circles like she doesn't know what to respond back with.

After a minute of wracking through his brain and coming up with nothing, Harry clears his throat soundly and it startles her enough to drop her spoon against the ceramic bowl, clinking as the milk sloshed and she darts her head to look at him, "Oh," she breathes out a sigh of relief, "Thought you were Jeffery." She plucks her spoon back up in fingers but makes no effort to eat the cereal, "Hi."

Harry musters a smile, still mighty confused, "Hello," he begins, taking a step closer, "Um, I don't believe we've met before."

The girl had been opening her mouth to respond, but a voice rings out that he recognizes immediately, "Y/N!" Jeffery calls, feet slapping against the tiled floor of the kitchen and the girl's -- Y/N's -- shoulders slump, a pout dipping her lip down, "What'd I say about helping with the equipment? John's been wrestling with the amp for about ten minutes and you started that bowl of cereal thirty minutes ago."

She gives a dramatic groan, head lulling around and body slumping down, "Ohhh, but Jeffery," she grouses, "You know my arms are like noodles, and after such a long, awful flight my legs are still cramped," Harry is confused until he catches the teasing light in her eyes as smile plays on her mouth, "You brought me here for my brain, not my brute strength, I think it's unfair to switch it up so quick into the trip!"

Rolling his eyes, Jeffery kisses his teeth at her, "Yeah, yeah, you pour damsel in distress, I watched you lift both of your twenty pound suitcases and walk up the escalator because you got tired of waiting. Get out there and help him."

"Aish, fine," she says in defeat, scooting her chair out and picking up her bowl, mindful of the milk still dancing around inside the bowl, clicking the faucet on and dumping the remains of it out, "But if I break my arms you're nursing me to health."

After she'd stuffed the bowl into the dishwasher, she presses up her sleeves and slinks out through the sliding glass door, leaving Harry with Jeffery who swings the door open to the fridge, disappearing behind it, "Hey," he begins, the candles' glass still cooling his palm, "Who is that?"

He resurfaces with a pineapple juice carton, "You haven't met Y/N?" He asks, and Harry shakes his head, "Oh, well she's like an intern so to speak."

"Intern?" Harry repeats.

Jeffery nods, "Yeah, she's g'na help a bit with the album, but mostly focus on some side projects that I can't give my full attention to while we're out here," he reaches up for a glass, spinning it upright onto the counter as he twists open the cap of his juice, "Real funny girl, but a pain in my ass, I'll tell you that. You'll like her."

Harry doesn’t know if he’s so sure of that.

AND 2. ALPHA HARRY

Harry doesn't like Y/N.

Plain and simple, as straight as he can make it -- there is something about the girl that just gets on his damn nerves. Whether it be how she floats around like she owns the god damn world, or how she talks to him like he's beneath her. Like just because he didn't have to go to college to get where he is today, made him less qualified and deserving of his position in his family-run company. That while she's wilting away in student debt in her third year of college, somehow she's better than him. That just because Alpha's have a track record of being douche-y, entitled pricks, he's automatically lumped in with the whole of them. If anyone is the entitled prick it's her, he would say -- the fucking arse. Thought she was above all the alpha/omega dynamics just because she was a beta, so blissfully unaware of the actual nitty gritty aspects of it but coined it off as alpha's being power hungry dicks instead of doing what's in their nature and what is best for their omega.

All of it pisses him off -- it's why he can't stand her. Why he can't stand that his friends like her. Why he can't for the life of him stand when they're forced to be in the same room together, yet nobody considers either of their feelings in the matter when they decide to invite them both along.

So why is he outside of her door at 2AM, smelling of his expensive brandy, wet from rain, with tears threatening beneath his eyes?

Well, he couldn't be sure.

The night had started out just fine. Harry was taking a nice girl out on a date at a restaurant in the center of town -- one where the wine isn't optional, the waiters wear all white without a smudge of a stain, and nothing on the menu costs less than seventy dollars. He'd picked her up half past five, talked her up in the car, they ate steak and linguini, went out for drinks after and. . .he doesn't know what went wrong. Everything was fine until it wasn't and Harry realized he didn't want to be out with this girl at all -- maybe it was the way she kept asking about business. . .each question leading to how much he's making, where his expensive suit is from, how he affords all of his cars. Maybe it was because each time a particularly handsome bartender with a cutting jawline would pass by, she'd wink all cutesy at him and tell Harry she was just bartering for them to get free drinks. Or maybe it was his lack of interest in her as a person, because it dwindled with their conversation, until she'd some how resorted to just a pretty faced omega looking to get in his wallet.

Whatever it was, it's why he cut the date short. Took her home early, returned to his humble abode, and preceded to get soused on brandy, reveling in his own self doubt in an immense pity party. Then called up an Uber to take his drunk arse from his home to Y/N's, which he'd remembered from a long time of hitching a ride with his friends and them stopping by to pick her up. Liam was the worst of it -- always wanted her around so always made a point of stopping by to get her, a trip Harry has made plenty of times.

(It's always confused him Liam's interest in her. It was in no way romantic as one might think it'd be, because Liam had a girlfriend but for some reason he genuinely cared about such a dick of a person. The only explanation he'd give was "she's had it hard" but who the very well hasn't? Harry's gone through shitty things too but nobody is going out of their way to pick him up and pay for his meal when he's short on cash, but that's neither here nor there, he supposes.)

And he knocks on her door, waits patiently as he can, his hands stuffed into the pockets of his coat. Though the thick scent of rain and wet grass is heavy on his nose, he can smell her just as she's about to twist the handle of the knob, hearing gentle murmurs of confusion as she swings the door open to reveal her in nothing but a large t-shirt. Understandably confused, her brows furrow and she dips her head down a bit, "Harry?" She questions, voice scratchy from slumber.

The tears he'd been fighting back finally creep past the surface, tickling up over his waterline, his face scrunching as a small sob wracks through his body. Y/N's face drops in alarm, probably just as bewildered as Harry is because he doesn't know what he's fucking doing. Only knows that he's standing on her small porch step crying, as she begins to usher him into her home, "Harry, what's wrong? What's going on? Come in, come here, you'll catch a cold out there," she reaches out, touches at his shoulder and pulls him so that his feet begin moving and he steps up into her home.

He'd never been in here before -- his heightened senses make her scent potent in his brain, and as much as he hates to admit it, it was all the more comforting to him. Y/N leads him to her couch, sets him down, and hurries off as Harry tries to fully understand what is happening to him right now and still drawing a blank. He'd be fine! Sure, he was upset over the bummy date he'd gone on but he didn't think that certified crying. Especially in front of someone he's sure would love to see his love life is full of shit. He hates being around her but god, in the short time she'd disappeared down the hallway Harry wanted nothing more than for her to be back. Maybe it was because she was gentle and warm, and the way her eyes softened at his teary flushed face made his insides melt.

When he's drunk he's usually much more in tune with his feelings; understands himself a bit more like this. A time where he is completely vulnerable to open up to himself and others. However he couldn't quite make sense of this at all. Ever since they'd met, Y/N and Harry had been at each other's throats -- why would she be his first person to run to when he's in this state?

And why is it, when she reappears with a bundle of clothes in her hand and a glass of water, that he feels so relieved to see her again?

#leMME KNOW I COULD GO EITHER

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junker-town · 7 years

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Mayweather-McGregor and the death spiral of American sports

I used to work at the American casual dining chain Bennigan’s, and it’s really helped me think about the impending shitshow that is the Mayweather-McGregor fight.

This was in the death spiral days of their lifespan as a business, meaning no one had come up with a new idea at Bennigan’s for at least ten years, maybe longer. Instead, every “new” idea at Bennigan’s consisted of combinations of old ideas mashed together. This explains why, at some point, it is likely that the “onion ring-loaded tater skin” existed on the menu.

I’m not sure of that, though. I tried to block the whole experience from my brain because it happened at a very bad time in my life, when I was playing The Sims too much, didn’t know what I wanted to do, and lived off tips from sunburned Floridian office park drones biding their time between work hours and their inevitable and expensive semi-monthly DUI arrests.

What I do remember: The kitchen staff grumbling as they were told to stack the same ingredients in a thousand different ways, usually with gigantic hangovers, and often while having loud arguments with their girlfriends on flip phones and listening to Korn and DMX on an ancient boom box. They knew it was horseshit, and they pulled it hot out of the fryer and threw it on the plates because it was their job.

It was when I realized that to a very depressed person, Baudrillard might be right: Our culture might be a corpse, and everything you see in it and confuse for life might just be the nails and hair of the corpse still expanding after death. That’s a weird conclusion to come to while watching someone plate up a Monte Cristo and an order of the same chicken tenders the restaurant had served for twenty years plopped on top of a bucket of soggy penne noodles and recycled cajun sauce from a recently cancelled menu addition—IT’S BAYOU CHICKEN PASTALAYA Y’ALL—but it’s where I went.

I think about this moment in my life a lot. I also think about how people reacted when I told them how bad something was, that it was inedible, that it was actually the same things crammed together in increasingly ghastly and baroque combinations. I didn’t do this on purpose at first—it was an accident, a moment of complete frustration when someone ordered something terrible and I finally lost all hope when someone spotted a new Frankendish and asked, with a moment of deranged excitement, “is that...good?” I’d tell them the truth: It was crap, and I wouldn’t spoon it into a pig’s mouth with a stable boy’s filthiest shovel.

It almost never failed. With a confident nod, usually, and a gleam of conviction in their eye, the customer would sit a little straighter in their chair and declare: “I think I’ll try that, then.”

This may be where we’re at. I’ll limit it to sports, though you can feel free to take that dynamic and sprint as far as you want with it. The NFL is bad, so bad that even its own fans will declare it a blight on their own lives. Baseball is boring, college football is increasingly regarded as a tax dodge and festive violation of every labor law ever written, and NASCAR and the NHL have entered the “maybe I’ll just apply for a real estate license and see what happens” stage of late adult wage-earning. Horse racing is working as a greeter at Wal-Mart; Soccer continues to get promising jobs at startups that flame out after six months. (But there’s still so much potential, they say.)

The NBA is cool. We’ll just leave the NBA as being completely cool, and the lone, shining exception to the hellscape of modern American sports. I know it has problems, and I also know I would like one pocket of blissful ignorance to hide in while the rest of the world happens.

Boxing is American sports’ prized zombie. When it shows up, everyone freaks the hell out and pays attention. It’s horrifying, arresting, contagious, and probably a bad thing for anyone concerned with human life. Hang out around it too much, and it will eventually eat you. Boxing, as a major sport, isn’t exactly alive—but it’s certainly not dead, and when there’s an outbreak people can’t pay attention to anything else.

It’s also one of those sports that an easily break quarantine as a discipline. They can crash all the way over into something else entirely. That something ends up being less like a sport, and more like pure, horrific, and inevitably absurd spectacle.

Photo by Ethan Miller/Getty Images

Spectacles are an American tradition—not always a smart one, or a safe one, or even a sane one, but a tradition nonetheless. My personal favorite is the Crash at Crush, where an otherwise unremarkable railway agent in Texas decided that colliding two steam engines at full speed would make a great event. The boilers on both locomotives exploded shortly after impact, and killed two or three people sitting too close to the action, but otherwise he was completely right.

It says something real about the year 1896 that a.) a “fun” event killed some of its spectators, and b.) no one’s exactly sure whether it was “two or three” dead.

A spectacle—at least for me—crosses the line from sport when it gets out of being a carefully regulated matchup with set rules and disciplines, and breaks into being something that people will watch simply to see it done, rules and form be damned. The 1970s, with the birth of cable television and expansion of pay-per-view programming, were great for them in particular.

For instance: In 1976, Muhammad Ali fought Antonio Inoki, a Japanese professional wrestler, in Tokyo. The results were confusing for everyone involved, the crowd chanted “MONEY BACK” at the conclusion of the fight, and judges declared the fight a draw. Later, the dearly departed wrestler Bret Hart, who worked for Inoki at the time, would claim the Black Muslims threatened Inoki with serious bodily harm if he so much as tried to touch Ali—which, in retrospect, is probably why Inoki spent most of the time half-heartedly kicking Ali in the legs.

More to the point: When Evel Knievel tried to jump the Snake River Canyon riding a glorified bottle rocket, he signed up investors to broadcast the attempt on closed-circuit TV. He enlisted, among others, boxing promoter Bob Arum and the WWE’s own Vince McMahon. The story had a heartwarming conclusion: Knievel’s chute partially opened on launch, he then drifted off course and landed short of the canyon rim, survived with minimal injury, and everyone involved lost money.

These may seem like dispatches from a crueler, weirder, older nation you can laugh at from a safe distance. Reader, you may not, because in 2004 there was a televised hot-dog-eating competition between Kobayashi and a grizzly bear standing in front of an American flag.

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The announcer Michael Buffer—again, boxing pops up here—made what might have been one of the greatest pieces of live sports commentary ever here when he beheld the bear taking a break after demolishing well over half his plate and said: “He doesn’t know it’s a competition.” This competition also featured forty-four dwarves pulling an airliner in a race against an elephant who was also pulling an airliner. This program made no bones about being anything other than a series of actualized problematic bar bets. Why yes, it was put together by Fox. Why did you ask?

There can’t be too much spectacle at once, if you’re into selling it for a living. Ask a WWE fan about how hard it is for anyone to measure that out properly. You’ll probably get a long, well-supported argument about “exactly what is wrong with Raw,” and detailed thoughts on how the WWE has mismanaged their biggest prospects, but it all centers around how spectacle—the thing the WWE in particular depends so much on—needs to be managed very, very carefully. Too much, too fast, and the audience can overdose and tune out with a quickness.

Mayweather-McGregor is clearly something beyond a fight. Categorically, it’s a spectacle, something between a dare and a show. Like all spectacles people will watch—not for the competition, but for the fact that it’s happening at all. Like a lot of spectacles, it seems to always involve someone from the boxing world, one of the last places in American sport happy to openly write checks for outright bloodsport* and eye-grabbing horror.

*Football at all levels, for legal purposes and brand management reasons, still likes to pretend it doesn’t do this.

The question for me is this: Is this something new, and ultimately depressing and calculated on a whole new level, or is it just another drunken wager made real? Netflix makes money leaning on data to produce things it knows its customers want—i.e., the now famous story about them producing House of Cards because the numbers already showed that it might work. People who liked Kevin Spacey also liked political thrillers; people who liked political thrillers also liked David Fincher; people who liked all of those things would probably like a political thriller franchise starring Kevin Spacey, and produced by David Fincher.

Netflix—or anyone else with the numbers—can do this all day. So can the people who make sports for you, and they very well might. With ratings falling for the NFL and a general panic setting in about the viability of large, bulky sports contracts, there’s no reason to think Mayweather-McGregor isn’t just a one-off spectacle, but the beginning of what is at least a steady sideline revenue stream based exclusively off the combination of existing ingredients.

Photo by Mike Lawrie/Getty Images

This isn’t saying that LeBron James will finally provide a real, visible answer to the question “Could Malcolm Gladwell beat you in a footrace” in a pay-per-view. Or it might be, and I’m completely wrong about what a sport is or isn’t, and how much pure, nihilist spectacle people might want in their lives at any given moment. Maybe the 2016 election changed that for me on a personal level. Maybe that goes back to watching people get told how bad something was, and watching them defiantly order it out of spite, contrarianism, and an unbending need to assert their unvalidated judgment at all times—even when doing that made no sense whatsoever, and in the end benefitted the worst people imaginable.

Maybe, at the very least, someone can make money off of it. It’s entirely possible that that’s the only real result or lingering after-effect here. After all, even if there’s not the actual possibility of something new and real in the fight, it’s another tried and true American business model at work: The chicken finger pastalaya, the combination KFC/Taco Bell, the Expendables franchise, the man-versus-bear fight you never knew you wanted, but watched anyway.

What that thing is probably depends on the observer’s mood. Mayweather-McGregor could be read as a kind of crowdsourced event, the start of something new made real, the beginning of something that ends with a sumo wrestler at last playing meaningful snaps at defensive tackle in an NFL preseason game because...well, because enough people wanted it to happen, and they showed up to watch it. It could also be one of the oldest tricks in the book: A guaranteed, for-pay disaster, built by cynicism and greed, and validated on the viewer’s part only by a desperation for something like novelty and a persistent morbid curiosity.

It could be the future of all sports, or none. I can’t decide which. That’s the problem right now with sports. Correction: That’s the problem with almost anything at any moment at all, really. It’s so hard to decide what’s alive, and what’s dead. What might be simply shambling forward through momentum alone.

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