Jack Doyle was notorious long before Conor McGregor

Every sports star fits the age in which they flourish. Nowhere was this point more obviously made than when Conor McGregor and Floyd Mayweather embarked on their four-city press conference tour to sell their forthcoming ‘fight’.

There is no need here to rehearse the crudity, homophobia, and misogyny – not to mention the suggestions of racism – that was on view. None of that really surprised.

What the repeated press conferences did more than anything else, of course, was reveal the limitations of the famed wit and humour that was supposed to run through it all.