The Misfits Boxing circus is the internet come to life – crass, toxic but impossible to ignore

Are you watching the KSI fight on DAZN PPV with S-X versus DTG on the AO Arena preliminary card? If your response to that spiel is LOL, FFS or even WTF then don't worry – you're not alone. 

However, the Misfits Boxing: Prime Card, one of the biggest sports-entertainment events of the year, is taking place in Manchester on Saturday night and it's impossible to ignore. 

In fact, if you try to ignore it they'll probably send someone round to put you in a chokehold until you agree to like, comment, follow, subscribe and buy enough Prime energy drink to float a frigate.

The Prime Card is co-headlined by KSI, a YouTube personality, musician, boxer and purveyor of energy drinks, taking on Tommy Fury, the former Love Island contestant and younger brother of heavyweight champion Tyson Fury.

Tommy, who is 1-3 to defeat KSI in the ring, appears to be a small voice of calm amid the storm of hysterical hype. Less so, his father John, judging by this headline from The Sun website: "John Fury tries to punch and HEADBUTT through wall to get to KSI".

To absolutely nobody's surprise, the pre-fight press conference descended into the kind of chaotic scenes not witnessed in Manchester since Penny Mordaunt's speech at the Conservative Party conference or Andre Onana's most recent appearance in goal at Old Trafford.

KSI attended Berkhamsted School, where the writer Graham Greene spent an unhappy spell in the early years of the 20th century. One of Greene's novels is called 'The Quiet American' but you'll struggle to find any of those at the Misfits Boxing showdown.

As well as Big John Fury's scrap with a wall, the press conference featured a mandatory brawl between American co-headliners Logan Paul and Dillon Danis. 

Mixed martial artist Danis has been riling Paul, another YouTube icon and Prime salesman, with a torrent of social-media sewage in the build-up to their fight. When they faced off on Thursday, Paul suffered a cut after being hit in the head with a microphone. 

Perhaps Danis, inspired by the old myth about a Gurkha kukri knife, believes that when a mic is unsheathed it must draw blood.

Incidentally, one of the undercard bouts pits King Kenny against Anthony Taylor, which is certainly an innovative way for Liverpool to settle their feud with the refereeing community.

For sports enthusiasts over the age of 30 there is a temptation to laugh at this silliness and hope that it goes away. That approach worked with Donald Trump, didn't it? Kind of.

Of course, it's not going anywhere. KSI and Logan Paul have energy drinks to flog, there are colossal pay-per-view TV deals on the table, and the hype building up to the lucrative rematches will begin just as soon as the Manchester mayhem is over.

Another reason why these events are here to stay is because they are, effectively, the internet come to life: depressing, crass, aggressive but also massive, undeniably popular and entrenched in the global culture. YouTube bore these characters. Twitter and TikTok exalted them. It turns out that toxic masculinity isn't really a problem, it's a fantastic promotional tool.

And we're all complicit to some extent. Aggro, whether genuine or performative, is an inseparable part of the modern sporting experience. Last weekend a video went viral of two Stoke supporters – yes, grown men – raging at a seven-year-old Leicester fan who had made a '1-0' hand gesture in their direction.

Who knows, if I were 20 years younger, maybe I'd be gatecrashing funerals, telling mourners to "Cry more!" and yelling: "Rattled! Rent-free in your heads!" as I'm escorted out of the church. ROFL.

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