WE GO AGAIN
KEVIN MCCALLUM: Why I shall probably give Mayweather freak show a miss
I can’t abide what he did to Jodie Harris
Twenty years ago, a few days after the end of an extended beer run that took in San Francisco, San Luis Obispo, Los Angeles and, naturally, Las Vegas, I sat down in the living room of the father of a friend of a friend in a little town in northern California. The fight of the bite was about to be shown live. Few bars in the town were going to show Evander Holyfield versus Mike Tyson, the Sound and the Fury II as it was billed. They could not afford the pay-by-view or did not want to pay for it. This was then the highest-grossing fight in history. They took $15m in ticket sales alone. TV viewers would pay around $50 for the fight. The New York Times said Cablevision viewers would have to pay $9.95 per round, capped at $49.95. The rand was R4.50 to the dollar then. I couldn’t afford it. Neither could the father of a friend of a friend. They had a pirate cable connection, their TV plugged in via a life-threatening mess of plugs and wires. We sat on the carpet with a case of beer betwee...
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