EARLIER THIS SUMMER, The Killers released a new single called The Man – taken from their upcoming album Wonderful, Wonderful, which is due out in September.
It had its own video, of course, featuring Brandon Flowers driving around Vegas, wearing a massive cowboy hat and singing on stage in a glittery suit.
Which made it all the more strange when, over the weekend, the band released a short second video hyping up the upcoming Conor McGregor and Floyd Mayweather fight
This time the band were in a boxing ring, in what appears to be new footage
Interspersed with clips of the two fighters being showered with cash
Standard.
The video was released on the official Showtime YouTube channel, and is clearly an arranged sponsorship deal between the band and the pay-per-view channel.
But it’s a surreal partnership nonetheless
Flowers was even contacted by Rolling Stone, who had questions about why they were doing a McGregor/Mayweather promo video. He said:
I think there’s a symbiotic relationship between using a song like ours, Las Vegas and a boxing arena. Business of boxing. It seemed to make sense. And I just wanted an excuse to wear this suit again. Really the main reason.
The song must have been requested to be used by Showtime, so they came up with a solution for a new promo video:
Oh, you want to use our song? We want to be in a ring too. You know what I mean… and I just wanted an excuse to wear this suit again. Really the main reason.
Flowers goes all out in the ring too
And he’s not scared of hyping it up in interviews either:
It sounds like an exciting movie in the ’80s. It sounds like some movie, good premise. It’s exciting. It is surreal
Yes, very surreal.
It turns out the Las Vegas band have a major emotional connection to boxing, as they explained to Rolling Stone yesterday:
I think we’re nostalgic about it you know. And it’s again going back to the roots of it in Las Vegas. My grandma used to work at the Golden Nugget and she met Muhammad Ali. She met all these characters throughout the years. My dad used to work on the west side of Vegas and he worked at this grocery store and Sonny Liston came in and shook his hand. My dad still talks about how big Sonny Liston hands were. I think that we defiantly have that romance… to me, there’s something romantic about boxing. No offense UFC people.
Sounds like they could be in the Mayweather camp come Saturday night, and you wouldn’t rule out that the song will get another airing on the night – possibly live.
It’s set to be a strange, star-studded buildup.
