Kelly: Mayweather, McGregor each strut away with their own prizes from 'fight of the century'

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It's a half hour into Floyd Mayweather's postfight news conference and things are getting a little off track.

He's standing in the ring at the T-Mobile Arena, where he's just capped his perfect professional boxing career. They've taken down the ropes and put up a lectern. Mayweather has on a bizarre, multizippered track suit and Hublot ball cap he's already told us he's being paid "many, many millions" to wear.

"The new-school iPod, you're not able to shuffle the songs," Mayweather says to general bafflement. "But the old-school iPod, you can have more diamonds on it, and you can shuffle it. I like a lot of old-school music …"

Read more: Mayweather's win over McGregor was, if nothing else, entertaining

Mayweather stops, perks up and smiles. A few people turn to see what he's looking at.

"C'mon in, Conor," Mayweather says, like someone's just shown up at his back gate for a barbecue. Then he continues to ramble about '90s R&B.

Conor McGregor, the mixed-martial-arts fighter who faced Mayweather on Saturday night in what was billed as the fight of the century, is hanging in the tunnel with a dozen of his entourage. The neckless guys in suits turn to McGregor for guidance. He doesn't want to take the stage while Mayweather is still up there soaking it all in, but now he has no choice.

Despite losing via 10th-round technical knockout, McGregor still has his strut. Arms stuck out and waving like a drum major. Legs coming around in broad semi-circles. He's holding a bottle of booze in one hand.

When McGregor gets halfway there, Mayweather extends an arm cordially.

"Ladies and gentlemen, to the podium, I'd like to call up the notorious one, Conor McGregor."

It is simultaneously a well-mannered and deeply belittling gesture. Which was the point. Of the whole fight.

McGregor didn't humiliate himself in the ring

If you weren't there, you're wondering, "How stupid was this thing?"

Here's an example.

Mayweather's main protégé, Gervonta Davis, fought in the card's penultimate match, against Francisco Fonseca. Davis did everything he could to sell that bout to an audience that did not care – came to the ring dressed in Cookie Monster cosplay, had superfluous tassels cut off his boots midway through, repeatedly landed blows after tucking his hands behind his back, feigned drunkenness and tried swinging while hanging off the top rope. When Davis knocked his opponent out, he got down on the mat and mocked his fetal curl.

It wasn't very nice, but it was hard to ignore.

What were the people in the ringside seats doing? Ignoring it. A bunch of them were lined up while the bout was ongoing to take selfies with a guy dressed as the Sasquatch from the beef-jerky ads.

Elsewhere, there were a lot of women out-of-doors in their underwear and men in velour suits and, hey, Ozzy Osborne, and some sadsack in a $40,000-seat pulling a face when Paul Pierce, who's a good 6-foot-7, sat down in front of him.

All that to say, it was a boxing match, but boxing was a bit beside the point. McGregor got that.

"What's up, everybody?" he shrieked upon mounting the podium. "I brought my whisky up. Notorious Irish whisky, coming soon. Do I answer questions or just rattle on?"

You were watching one guy become the other. Until a few weeks ago, McGregor was a mouth with fists. He had belts and fame, but he was still one of many.

After a two-month curriculum through the School of Advanced Floydian Studies, he has graduated to international brand manager. Every time you appear in public, you're doing marketing outreach. Whisky, a sports-promotional business, a line of custom suits – McGregor made sure to get them all multiple mentions.

As he did it, you could see Mayweather – now perched on a bar stool with his hands clasped, looking tiny and bored – smile a little: 'This dummy's figuring it out'.

It didn't seem to bother McGregor that he'd been comprehensively defeated. He knows that people think he made a good showing. Which is to say, he didn't humiliate himself in the fashion many experts predicted.

He was the aggressor early, swinging wildly while Mayweather bored into him with his head down, inviting contact. The Irishman probably won the first three rounds.

That was Mayweather's plan. The most cunning pugilist of his generation waited for McGregor to tire, softened him up in the middle section of the fight, then put him away in the ninth and 10th. Everything happened exactly as Mayweather wanted it to.

By the end, McGregor was so exhausted he could no longer pick up his gloves to defend himself. He stood there like Jake LaMotta, calmly absorbing punishment.

Given McGregor's complete lack of experience, it could've been much worse. Veteran referee Robert Byrd was the stand-in for boxing's many disgusted purists when he delivered his long, scolding instructions.

"This will be a clean, professionally fought bout. Under boxing rules," Byrd said in part, enunciating as you would to an unruly classroom. "I'm not going to wrestle with you. I'm not going to grapple with you. When I say stop, stop."

The lecture went on so long, the crowd began to boo in frustration.

By the second round, Byrd was grappling with them. McGregor could not turn off his mixed-martial-arts muscle memory. He repeatedly climbed Mayweather's back, or beat him about the top of head with the heel of his fist during clinches.

At the end of the fifth, as he'd begun to take over, Mayweather reached out and shoved McGregor in the back as he headed to his corner.

"You still ain't knocked me out yet," Mayweather shouted. "I thought you said it wasn't going past four?"

Then referee Byrd reached out and shoved Mayweather. It was that sort of bout. A little stupid, and a lot of fun to watch.

All the buffoonery had bled from McGregor by that point. He was taking big, gulping breaths, wide-eyed and well out of his depth. But he stood in there with one of the best ever and did not look ridiculous. That's something.

As Byrd jumped in to save him at the end, McGregor appeared to say, "I was okay. I'm just sayin'."

He was not.

"He should've let me keep going. I was just a little fatigued," McGregor said later.

No, he wasn't.

That will be the angle McGregor works if and when he resumes his fighting career – I was robbed.

Again, he was not. McGregor was completely out-thought by a man who does that better than just about any boxer in history. But as long as you have a narrative, you have a chance. That's another thing McGregor's figured out.

McGregor now has a variety of choices open to him – he can go back to UFC and reconsolidate his base; he can continue boxing (though if he tries his current act against a real puncher, such as Canelo Alvarez, he will be destroyed); he can go to L.A. and make movies or start his own reality show or build up his whisky brand.

That's what this fight was to McGregor – a promotional gateway to doing anything he wants.

Going into it, Mayweather's angle was harder to figure. Sure, the money, as much as $300-million (U.S.) of it. But he's already got a ton of money. And, yes, 50-0. But Mayweather's never shown much interest in doing Rocky Marciano one better. Undefeated is undefeated.

It was only as it ended that you understood what this was about – an opportunity for Mayweather to go out on his own terms.

He'd tried this once before, against Manny Pacquiao in 2015. That was a genuine fight of the century, on paper at least. Mayweather won an unassailable decision. But it was still a disaster for him.

The spotlight that fight pulled had people outside the business of boxing looking closely at Mayweather for the first time. A lot of what they saw – the financial profligacy, the convictions for domestic abuse, the brittle smugness – repulsed them. For the first time in his life, Mayweather was cast in the public imagination as a real villain, as opposed to the one he played on TV. Despite fighting a foreigner in his hometown, Mayweather was relentlessly booed from the weigh-in on.

The post-fight presser in 2015 had a much darker tone. Mayweather spent most of it berating his critics. He brought his family up on stage with him, and they all wanted to be somewhere else. It was Mayweather as Nixon – bitter, aggrieved and pompous.

"Ali, he called himself the greatest. But this is my era," Mayweather brayed. "I'm just the American dream."

The line rang so hollow that night in the darkened MGM Grand Arena, it was a functional gong. This was a sad, rich man slinking back to his yacht to cuddle with a bag of money.

So, two years later, Mayweather picked a better foil.

He knew McGregor would shock mainstream sensibilities with his crude approach and send the non-Irish, non-MMA casual fan his way.

He knew that McGregor's presumption – that a man who'd never boxed before could do so at the highest level – would drive the sport's aesthetes back into his arms.

Mayweather had never lost, but it had been a long time since he'd been in a fight you'd call entertaining. He knew McGregor would be so overmatched, he could afford the risk of being fun for the first time in forever.

According to Mayweather, he didn't bother sparring in the month before the fight because he didn't want to risk injuring his hands. There's confidence and then there's whatever that is.

In the run-up, Mayweather did not stoop to insults. He didn't say much at all. He allowed McGregor to suck up all the oxygen in every room, because he knew how this was going to end. He'd be the one talking when it mattered – afterward.

They say that after 40 you should buy experiences instead of things.

That's what the 40-year-old Mayweather did – he bought an experience. For one night, he got to feel what it's like to be the good guy.

He gave McGregor a hundred million dollars, and McGregor gave him a sort of redemption. It was a fair deal.

Mayweather retired – again – but this time you had no doubt. It won't ever work out this perfectly again. Mayweather's smart enough to understand that. He said he wants to become a full-time trainer, like his father. It was almost touching.

He was asked what's next for boxing – as in, who's the next Floyd?

Mayweather said there were "a lot of young lions" in the game, but he couldn't name one off the top of his head. Because there isn't one. Not like him.

Mayweather's genius is also the reason he will never be regarded in the very top echelon of pugilists – he never took a fight he didn't know he could win. Most guys don't have the sense, the luxury or the cynicism to do so.

Pretty clearly, boxing's vacancy at the top is weighing on McGregor's mind. There are a bunch of good reasons for him never to try this again – having his head cleaved from his shoulders by a top fighter in his prime would be the main one.

But with Mayweather gone, the pay-per-view throne must look pretty inviting.

When that question was put to McGregor he mused around the edges of it, not wanting to say anything he'd have to walk back later.

"I'm certainly young," McGregor, 29, said. "I don't think the boxing world and the fighting world has seen someone come in at this level, of these accolades, of …"

That was the point at which Mayweather got up and left the stage – with McGregor in mid-sentence.

Once again, it simultaneously was and wasn't a rude gesture. Mayweather let McGregor have his moment. For the winner, there was nothing more to accomplish by being in a boxing ring.