The VICE Sports Guide to Watching Mayweather/Pacquiao

Saturday's Floyd Mayweather vs. Manny Pacquiao boxing match is the biggest fighting event in literally hundreds of years, and the year's highest profile sporting event in a walk. It is, after all, two greatish-to-great boxers in their mid-to-late 30's who have never fought before, fighting. It also costs $100 to watch, which is entirely too much money to pay to watch 40 minutes of sports. If you tack $10 onto that price, you could buy MLB.tv and watch too much baseball for a whole year.

Also, around 30 of those dollars will go directly into the pocket of Floyd Mayweather, a serial abuser of women. Something like $25 will belong to Manny Pacquiao, a crummy basketball player and even worse Filipino politician, a man who uses the political office that his fame won him to oppose reasonable birth control and AIDS prevention policies. The rest of the money will be distributed to boxing promoters, cable companies, and VIACOM, all of whom are somehow the least objectionable parties in this deal.

This is a conundrum. It is normal to want to watch a sports event this monumental, but paying to watch this fight is almost certainly immoral. Blessedly, there are ways around this. Here is how you do it.

ILLEGAL STREAMING

There are some websites, and I won't say which, that will stream the fight somewhere underneath a small pile of advertisements for possibly quite dangerous bootleg boner pills. You could take it in on one of these websites, but think about it for a second: illegal streaming operations? Who profits? A mob, probably. A criminal syndicate. In the absolute best of the best case, some creep who hangs out on 4chan boards is pocketing the revenue your eyeballs generate.

But there is a MORAL Alternative: Bono, the lead singer of U2 and charity, owns and operates an illegal streaming website. All of the ill-gotten gains from the site go straight to UNICEF's microlending program, where they create lasting economic change in communities across the developing world. VICE's legal team, who are a pack of cowards but otherwise very nice, are preventing me from directly linking to the site, but I can provide you with a good screenshot:

Now THAT'S a website you can poach your sports from, guilt free! Do the right thing.

SPORTS BARS

Your local sportshole might be showing the fight, but you're gonna have to pony up a few dollars in cover charges to get in. Nobody wants that! But don't worry: anyone with even marginal ambition get into a bar charging cover. Take this watering hole in my neighborhood:

On the outside, it looks impenetrable. But I scouted the joint before they opened and found a few weaknesses you can exploit.

You COULD stroll in through this side entrance, but I think it's a pretty risky proposition. Few sports fans are proficient lockpicks, as most have fat, clumsy, weirdly greasy hands; if they didn't, they would be playing piano in a swanky hotel instead of watching sports. Another option is to smash the glass with a hammer or a rock, which would create a lot of noise and draw attention to what would ideally be a clandestine entrance. If you can time your glass smashing with a moment when everyone in the facility is cheering, or even while several toilets are flushing at once, there might be enough noise to get away with it. I, personally, wouldn't take the risk.

Here is the back entrance to the bar. You might think, "I don't know, Corbin, looks pretty impenetrable. Those look like they're made of steel." But a cursory examination reveals…

…their garbage area is totally unlocked and accessible! And if you slide your eyes juuuuust to the right…

…the back door employee entrance, COMPLETE with a hectoring "NO SMOKING" sign! If you time it just right, you can just slip in with no resistance, hide out in a bathroom until the door closes, and stroll on out into the main bar area, where an obscene number of televisions and a projector will show the fight to you. But if you're risk adverse, like me, you could take the extra step…

…and manufacture your own! I'll bet a hundred people work there, you'll fit right in! Just be ready to present your food handlers card if an inspector shows up. OR, come to think of it, you could impersonate the food inspector! He probably has a mustache. But if you're looking for a silver bullet…

You could just hop in this open, unlocked dumpster, wait for them to take it inside to refill with cardboard, and hop out into the bar! Or if you aren't that patient or you just want to watch the fight alone, you could set a fire in the dumpster, run into the bar in the ensuing chaos, lock all the doors, and enjoy the fight with 11 105-inch TV's all to yourself. This is surely how Floyd Mayweather, Jr. watches "Vanderpump Rules" at home.

Of course, if you do that, someone won't be able to use the cardboard to mulch fruit trees. There are a great many pro's and con's, here.

FRONT ROW SEAT

But what if you want to BE there? In the casino conference room where they hold the fight? Tickets to this monstrosity are running thousands of dollars a piece, ON TOP of the plane ticket you're going to have to score to get to Las Vegas in the first place. You would have to upend your entire life to get an even halfway decent seat.

I have a solution for you. The only question is: how close do you want to get?

How about inside one of the fighter's minds? Is that close enough for you? With the advent of modern kitchen technology and the art and science of Alchemy, the study of the healing and transportational effects of plants, herbs, and other natural thing on the human body and soul, you can do it. You can be inside the mind of one of the fighters, analyzing his strategy in real time, taking in every blow without risking your own fragile brain, feeling another man's feet shuffle beneath you.

First, gather your ingredients:

You'll need:

-Half an apple, with the core still in. (The arsenic in the seeds is important)

-Several freshly harvested branches of a thyme plant

-Three maple saplings, also freshly harvested

-The largest weed in your yard

-About 25 uncooked beans, loosely chopped (This releases the amino alchmids faster.)

-Your own blood (A finger prick will do.)

-1/2 cup oatmeal

-A picture of the person whose mind you want to reside in (I have chosen Mayweather, because I have less than no desire to watch him box, as he is extremely boring.)

Fill a heavy-bottomed wide pot with fresh artisanal well water.

Turn your stove up to high and add the oats. The starches will flow in and out of the still living ingredients, giving the mixture its power.

Add the weed, the thyme, the saplings, and the apple. Then, tear the picture of the boxer whose mind you would prefer to occupy in in half.

Stir the mixture for a minute. This will allow the spiritual and biological properties of the mixture to merge into one, and prepare it to accept the human gift.

Squeeze 3-5 drops of your blood into the pot. Remember: too little and it won't work, too much and you will be driven to circular madness, your mind overloaded with the power of nature until your brainblood leaks out of your nose. It's up to you! But I would advise that it's better to be safe than sorry. Be an HONEST JUDGE of the power of your own spirit!

Wait for the potion to boil. It should smell like a commercial bakery, but a little gasoline-ier. You'll want to smell it.

Right when the first bell rings, dip your head over the potion and inhale the steam deeply, into your sinuses and lungs. DO NOT DRINK OR EAT THE POTION UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES!!!!

You will be transported into the mind of a great prizefighter in the middle of the battle of his life. Keep in mind, boxing kind of hurts, and if someone gets knocked out, it could get a little boring for a few minutes. (In case you were wondering: when I inhaled my demo mixture, I was taken into Floyd's consciousness and lived through him berating a Las Vegas parking attendant with homophobic slurs and threats of violence for 40 excruciating minutes. It was both vivid and immensely unpleasant.)

This trip into a pro boxer's mind will come with a pretty bad "Hangover." You should eat a handful of almonds to replenish your body's depleted fat and protein stores, which were eaten by hungry wandering ghosts that invaded your body while your soul was not present to fight them. No one ever said this was easy.

WATCH IT ON PUBLIC ACCESS

Because of a poorly negotiated early contract, all of Manny Pacquiao's fights are shown in standard definition on public access television. Check your local listings.