Hiring Donald Trump as analyst shows novelty of celebrity fight cards wearing thin

This is a column by Morgan Campbell, who writes opinion for CBC Sports. For more information about CBC's Opinion section, please see the FAQ.

Back in June, Jim Lampley, the play-by-play voice of countless classic boxing matches, exposed the limits of his expertise when he argued that Floyd Mayweather's reign as boxing's top draw created the social and political environment that enabled Donald Trump to win the 2016 election. 

That Lampley can't see the flaws in his argument signals that it's fair to question his intellectual firepower as a political scientist. But he was smart enough to quit his latest broadcast job, calling last Saturday's farce of a boxing match between Vitor Belfort and Evander Holyfield, after the fight's promoters hired Trump as an analyst, and before the two aging fighters could enter the ring.

Two days after the bout, in which the 44-year-old Belfort steamrolled the 58-year-old Holyfield in less than one round, the public relations firm hired to work the event announced that, like Lampley, it was finished working with Triller, the outfit that staged Saturday's card.

"EAG Sports Management is NO LONGER Working with Triller or Triller Fight Club EFFECTIVE IMMEDIATELY!" read a memo EAG president Denise White emailed to journalists Monday. "Feel free to print that!"

We don't know what prompted the sudden severing of ties, though it was possibly the false statements Triller officials scattered like seeds in the leadup to the fight. Triller told ESPN it was negotiating a commentary deal with former president Barack Obama; Obama's camp told the New York Times that idea was false.

It might have been the intentional fogginess around whether Saturday's main event was an exhibition, understandable between combatants with a combined age of 102, or an official fight, unconscionable given that Holyfield slurs his words and turns 59 next month.