Yet Casino Capitalism is a temptress hardly anyone can resist, and there was no place on earth better suited for this fight, at this time, than Vegas. As author and journalist Tim O’Brien inventoried in Bad Bet about that time in our history, “Judged by dollars spent, gambling is now more popular in America than baseball, the movies, and Disneyland- combined.” Factoring in gambling, hotels, hookers, and so forth, the ancillary level climbs into the billions. And that’s before we consider any of the money Vegas raked in.

If any commodity’s price, beyond its utility, is chiefly determined by how much we desire it, then consider that watching two half-naked men not beating the hell out of each other in a ring for twelve rounds has just generated more than half a billion dollars. We’ve paid Mayweather and Pacquaio more than for any other championship bout in history and we were just getting started. The live gate surpassed what was earned from Super Bowl XLIX. Houses could be purchased clear title for the asking price of ringside seats. There is no more emblematic champion of America and what our system represents in our time than the one-note, anemic, poor-man’s Walter White, anti-hero construct of Money Mayweather. Win, lose, or draw: both men were guaranteed nine-figure paydays. As soon as the contracts were signed, we already knew who would remain the last hero left standing: the money. Pacquiao was already the defining fight of our generation, regardless of the outcome. Like an inside joke that infected the collective water supply, even before the final bell, Mayweather vs. Who reflected the turmoil and unrest of the 1960s more than Muhammad Ali, or Reagan’s and Gordon Gekko’s America more than Iron Mike Tyson? When Joe Louis flattened Max Schmeling with a right hand on June 22, 1938, a little over two minutes into their rematch in front of 80,000 people at Yankee Stadium, the world knew Hitler and everything Fascism had been dealt a decisive blow also. Jack Johnson became the first African-American world champion at the turn of the 20th century, and inspired dozens of lynchings when he toppled Jim Jeffries, the “Great White Hope.” Jimmy Braddock epitomized a people’s champion for the working man’s struggle during the Great Depression. We’ve always gotten the champion we deserve, and this time is no different. “I hope you’re not squeamish,” she warned, slamming her palm against a moth on her front desk. “You’re here for fight week?” the bloodshot-eyed woman behind the counter asked Mickey as he handed over his credit card and ID. A swarm of moths chased us into the lobby of a timeshare as we tried to check in nearby, only to discover the entire staff of maids, security, and both women behind the front desk, manically swinging bathroom towels trying to murder as many moths as they could. Local bats and nighthawks took advantage and swooped in for a genocidal feeding frenzy as sunburned, hungover tourists enjoyed their own all-you-can-eat buffets in the air-conditioned nightmare of casino hotel below.

In the days before this fight Las Vegas experienced a moth infestation unlike any seen in decades, and nothing built in human history, it seems, attracts them like the Luxor Sky Beam.

Finally roaming past the Gatsby-green glow of the MGM, all the haunting beauty of the Luxor’s pale light, flung hundreds of miles into the sky where an astronaut once lied he’d seen it from space, became trivial next to the millions of moths visibly contaminating its reach.

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