Ray Flores started his career in the seats of the Hammond (Ind.) Civic Center, doing play by play into a microphone for an MMA broadcast that would air a week later on public access TV. He was 17 and he knew exactly what he wanted to do with his life.

Fast forward to this summer as Flores, almost 31, was hosting a made-for-TV press conference between Floyd Mayweather and Conor McGregor at the Wembley Arena in London.

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Not a bad career trajectory for a hard-working man who lives in Chicago and grew up in East Chicago, Ind.

Listen, if you’re not excited about this Saturday’s absurd junior middleweight boxing match between longtime champion Mayweather and his MMA challenger McGregor, I don’t blame you. Depending on your perspective it’s a grotesque manifestation of our country’s worst impulses or a comically transparent cash grab in a once-renowned sport. 

But if you’re a hardcore fight fan, a combat sports junkie, like Flores, this fight is about as pure as it gets. It’s imagination meeting bone and muscle.

Forget the social implications and the sleaziness (my word, not his) of the fighters involved. Don’t you just want to watch someone get knocked out? Isn’t that still the basis for this sport, and really, any sport?

“Why can’t we as sports fans who love entertainment just accept this is something we’ve never seen and enjoy it,” Flores said to me in a phone conversation from Las Vegas. “Relish it for what it is. Let them fight. They’re fighters, they will entertain us. Just enjoy it. This is the Super Bowl of combat sports and we’ve never seen anything like it.”

I spent about a half-hour on the phone with Flores, a longtime friend, and was ready to order the fight then and there. I might have to leave Saturday’s John Mellencamp concert at Ravinia, after he plays “Jack & Diane,” to catch it at Dave Kaplan’s house, but I’m now excited for the prospect that something memorable will happen.

I purposefully ignored the build-up to to this weekend, but Flores was there for the wild ride. He somehow found himself on stages with Mayweather and McGregor this summer, serving as the in-arena host for their pre-fight hype tour that took them across North America and over the pond into England.

You might not have watched the tour, but you definitely heard about it. It was ugly stuff, even by fight standards. McGregor offered, um, how should I phrase this as a professional writer, “racially charged rhetoric” in the time-honored tradition of racially mixed boxing matchups. Mayweather, who is coming out of retirement at 40 for a massive payday, was Mayweather.

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Flores blocked out the noise of the circus and focused on the skill of the performers.

“It’s been the best experience of my career,” he said. “It’s why we do what we do.”

Flores, whom I like a great deal, isn’t the guy you go to for a nuanced, social justice take on the morality play before us.

Flores works as an announcer for Premium Boxing Champions, a hybrid boxing series and fight promotions company. In this situation, Flores is also working for Mayweather’s own promotional machine, so he’s not an unbiased observer. 

But he understands why people are apprehensive about this fight and he’s realistic in what they’re trying to accomplish on Showtime on Saturday night.

“These guys are fighters,” Flores said. “Let’s be honest. Their job is to punch each other in the face and inflict damage. To put a moral compass on them, it’s unfortunate. It’s a shame. You can go through each franchise in sports and find people that are ‘bad guys.’ I’m not saying everything they said is 100 percent fine. Let’s call a spade a spade.”

There is obviously a large public space to debate the morality at play here. Mayweather’s history of violence against women (alleged and proven) is the worst kind of loathsome. McGregor’s persona isn’t for everyone.

But if you just like watching boxing, or mixed martial arts, this fight has some real intrigue. That’s what Flores is interested in. Before he was part of the event, he was already excited about the idea in and of itself.

Can McGregor actually win, I asked?

“I think it’s going to be entertaining,” he said. “I’m not going to lie to you [about McGregor’s chances]. I’m excited because we’ve never seen Conor box. Floyd has beaten everybody, but how will he deal with Conor’s unorthodox style? He might switch stances multiple times during the fight which you don’t see in boxing, and he’ll be throwing punches that won’t make any sense. Top-level boxers aren’t doing that. Conor is going to take chances and leave himself open to being countered by Floyd.”

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Basically, Flores is saying the obvious: Mayweather is going to beat McGregor, but we might see a more entertaining fight than we’re used to with Mayweather, whose conservative ring style belies his over-the-top lifestyle.

That seems fair.

Flores started his career as a MMA announcer and analyst, but he’s a longtime boxing fan, thanks to his parents, who adored Julio Cesar Chavez.

“I hate to say it, but I almost cried when Chavez lost to Frankie Randall in January 1994,” Flores said. “I was almost in tears. He was 90-0.”

If you know Flores, him saying he “almost cried” is like every other man you know saying he wept openly and flung himself down the stairs.

I got to know him during my time at ESPN 1000, back when I hosted an early morning weekend show and made appearances on the weekday shows. He was always a grinder and you could tell, with his old-school Michael Buffer voice and his big goals, that he was going places in the fighting world.

In our recent conversation, Flores told me he started working in the world of small-scale MMA fighting in high school and at Columbia College. He continued to chase his dream, hosting MMA-themed radio shows and showing up at fights as an announcer and an analyst/reporter. After college, he would fly to London to earn $400 doing ring announcing at small-scale fights in places like Manchester. He was an update anchor at ESPN 1000 until recently, and kept climbing in the fight world.

Pretty soon he started showing up as a ring announcer on fights on Showtime and FS1 and now he’s constantly on the go, flying out of Chicago to travel the country. He does ring announcing, but he can call or analyze a fight.

“This is why you go to small cities like the Tunica, Mississippi’s of the world,” he said. “You have to earn your stripes. It’s the work that I’m enjoying.”

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But how did he get the gig of essentially serving as the warm-up MC for this press tour?

“As the saying goes, closed mouths don’t get fed,” Flores said.

Classic Ray phrasing right there, but it’s a lesson for any of us, young or old.

“When I saw there was going to be a press tour, I told my bosses at PBC, if you need an announcer, I’d love to be a part of it,” he said. “Word spread throughout the company, they chose me and Showtime signed off on it. Floyd’s PR team went to bat for me, they said, ‘Ray can handle this.’ I’m eternally grateful for them. I had never flown in a private jet in my life. I had never been in front of a crowd that size in those buildings.”

A few days before the tour kicked off in Los Angeles, he got the call that he had the gig and off he went. Flores not only served as the warm-up act for the event, but he interviewed both fighters for PBC and Showtime, and his work was spread across the globe. In London, he had a bigger role, serving as the host of the main event, such as it was. While McGregor and Mayweather preened and promoted — there is no bad publicity for a fight of this scale — Flores watched it unfold. 

But the grind doesn’t stop. On Thursday, Flores had to leave Las Vegas to work a Friday fight in Miami, Okla., before hustling back on an early morning flight for Saturday’s main event. He doesn’t have a role for the big show, but his bosses at PBC and Mayweather told him “just to be ready, be around.”

That is no problem for Flores. Where else would he want to be, but in the middle of the action?

(Top photo: John Locher/AP Photo)