"Clash of the Nations"

I'd be a horrible publicist. Say, for example, you have a Russian boxer scheduled to fight an American boxer. How would you bill that? I'd call it

"Two guys fighting! You can bet there'll be hitting, and more hitting. And maybe soem blood. Only on Pay Per View."

Luckily, BodogFight hired somebody else to publicize last Saturday's match. They came up with the following:

"BodogFight: Fedor Emelianenko vs. Matt Lindland, Clash of the Nations"

Get that? Clash of the Nations. You got some guy from Bag O'Pretzels, Wyoming fighting somebody from Russia and all of a sudden it sounds like Gorbachev and Bush are rolling up their sleeves and arm-wrestling. America seems to square off against other nations any time one of our natives meets a foreigner in so much as a ping-pong match.

Obviously this proves we're competitive, but doesn't it also prove we're xenophobic? Doesn't it seem like we're desperate to prove we're better than them? Because otherwise we'd see this kind of hyperbole when Americans play each other. We'd hear radio ads like "Tiger Woods meets Phil Mickelson on the greens at Pebble Beach for a game that threatens to SPLIT THE COUNTRY APART!" "America's best bowlers, Wes Malott and Chris Barnes, meet in the alley for a match that's destined to SINK AMERICA INTO CIVIL WAR!!!

But no, that's stupid. It's just a game. Until other countries get involved, and then all bets are off.