Why the end is near for the celebrity fighting craze

In the mid-to-late 1990s, Top Rank produced a series of pay-per-view events headlined by Oscar De La Hoya that included on the undercards the modern-day equivalent of Logan and Jake Paul.

We saw it on Sept. 18, 1999, during the so-called “Fight of the Millennium” between De La Hoya and Felix Trinidad.

We saw it a few months earlier, on Feb. 13, 1999, on UNLV’s campus, for De La Hoya’s stirring victory over Ike Quartey at the Thomas & Mack Center.

And, of course, we saw it on Sept. 18, 1998, when De La Hoya rematched the legendary Julio Cesar Chavez Sr. for a welterweight title at the Thomas & Mack.

There were more, but you get the point.

What it was were matches featuring Eric “Butterbean” Esch…