Brawl for All

Sham prizefighting goes by many names these days—crossover boxing, celebrity boxing, influencer boxing—but it’s been around a long time. In the 1940s, a retired Jack Dempsey, folk hero of the Roaring Twenties, struck a path on the comeback trail by taking on a string of wrestlers. In 1975, George Foreman traveled to Toronto to flatten five tomato cans, one after the other, in a single night, in a bid to restore his confidence after Muhammad Ali had shattered it in Zaire. A year later, Ali went fifteen execrable rounds with the wrestler Antonio Inoki in their bewildering mixed-rules mash-up in Tokyo. The twenty-first century saw the breakout of celebrity boxing, featuring D-listers who were, according to one promoter’s pitch, on the prowl for their sixteenth minute of fame. Featuring the likes of Tonya Harding and Joey Buttafuoco, the Fox television series Celebrity Boxing was a ratings hit in 2002, some of the episodes going neck and neck with The West Wing and Fear Factor.