Adrian Peterson and Le’Veon Bell are the next contestants in ‘washed athlete boxing’
Nobody needs this.
In the latest installment of “washed athlete boxing,” Adrian Peterson and Le’Veon Bell are on the verge of arranging a bout, according to TMZ Sports.
The fight is planned to be a part of YouTuber Austin McBroom’s “Social Gloves” card, set to take place at Crypto.com Arena in Los Angeles on July 30. Up to this point the world knew that Bell was planning to turn to boxing, but his opponent was unknown — now all signs are pointing to 37-year-old Peterson filling that role.
It doesn’t take a genius to work out why anyone would take on a dumb, sloppy fight like this — because we all like money. Still, it’s a little bizarre that two backs who earned $103M and $45M in their careers respectively, all while taking years of potentially traumatic brain injury, would compete in a sport that revolves around traumatic brain injury.
This is never going to end until people stop caring. Every few months we’ll have a boxing event headlined by two random YouTubers, manufacturing beef online to use tribalism so they can dupe their subscribers into fighting for them online, arguing and watching — all while laughing about how much dough they’re raking in. Then, in an effort to diversify the card they’ll bring in two old athletes who have no business boxing, but they bring in a different target demo.
Then, when the dust settles, the next boxing event gets to feature a young YouTuber vs. an old athlete, where the tribalism can begin again — this time generationally. The hustle is spectacularly simple, but hey, it keeps working.