Mayweather Ripping Pacquiao: Timing Was No Coincidence

When we wanted to hear something from Floyd Mayweather Jr. regarding Manny Pacquiao, Mayweather went into hiding over the summer.

All Mayweather would reveal after Al Haymon represented Mayweather in negotiations with HBO Sports president Ross Greenburg for a fall fight against Pacquiao was that he was on “vacation.” Mayweather claimed he wasn’t thinking about boxing because he had just fought Shane Mosley and needed a break to relax and spend time with his family.

The egomaniacal Mayweather went as far as to have his adviser and close friend, Leonard Ellerbe, release a statement denying that Mayweather had any knowledge of negotiations for what would be one of the biggest fights in boxing history. His arrogance apparently knows no bounds, because he actually thought people would be stupid enough to believe him.

Unfortunately for those that support him, especially the four children for whom he’s supposed to set an example, Mayweather went on Ustream.tv from his Las Vegas home Thursday and showed just how ignorant he can be. His racist rant against Pacquiao proved just how ugly “Pretty Boy” is when he doesn’t have his image-molding publicity specialists surrounding him.

This unfiltered Floyd Mayweather Jr. was an immature imbecile in a roughly four-minute ambush of the peaceful, polite Pacquiao, who was touring the country to promote his Nov. 13 fight against Antonio Margarito when Mayweather went off in this vicious, vulgar video. Mayweather’s timing was no coincidence, obviously.

The attention-starved star isn’t interesting enough to attract much publicity when he doesn’t have a fight scheduled, so he desperately and foolishly found this aggravating alternative to steal some headlines away from the Pacquiao-Margarito promotion. Sadly, he even thought this was funny, as if making some sophomoric, stereotypical “jokes” at Pacquiao’s expense amounted to original programming.

Maybe Mayweather should use some of his money to pay people to write his comedic material, because he is hardly HBO-ready with that trash. He sounded much more like an insecure little kid on a playground in Grand Rapids, Mich., than Chris Rock.

That’s Mayweather’s primary problem, really. He is boxing’s most spoiled child, a smug multimillionaire accustomed to getting his way with the help of an army of enablers.

The world wants to see him fight Pacquiao. He doesn’t want to do it, at least not now, so he lashes out at a humble humanitarian who has done nothing but endear himself to the paying public during his rise to superstardom.

Make no mistake, Mayweather is a superstar, too, just more loathed than loved.

Only this time, he wasn’t playing the villainous “Money” Mayweather character he has admittedly developed during promotions to sell his fights. He’s not selling anything here, other than the fact that he is not nearly as smart as he would like us to believe.

In one foolish four-minute segment, Mayweather did irreparable damage to his mainstream image, a persona his handlers worked so hard to build by having him participate in “Dancing with the Stars,” television commercials and “WrestIeMania.” If executives at AT&T and Reebok, the two biggest brands Mayweather has endorsed in recent years, have any sense they’ll drop him just as fast as all those sponsors abandoned Tiger Woods.

If he didn’t operate in the wacky world of boxing, where there’s more tolerance for boorish behavior, Mayweather might’ve received those pink slips earlier today.

Nevertheless, he clearly crossed boundaries in ways we’ll never forget. It’ll be interesting to see how much Mayweather will pay for this dumb diatribe, literally and figuratively, and how it’ll affect the timing of his inevitable need to fight again.

You can be sure Mayweather will be rooting for Margarito (38-6, 27 KOs, 1 NC) to upset Pacquiao (51-3-2, 38 KOs) in two months at Cowboys Stadium, so that all this goes away. Then he could avoid Margarito again by claiming Margarito’s six losses and suspicious history make “The Tijuana Tornado” unfit to hit the Mayweather lottery.

If Pacquiao overcomes Margarito’s size and strength advantages, though, Mayweather will again be backed into a corner come early 2011. If finances force him to fight in May, we can only hope Greenburg either makes Mayweather fight Pacquiao or tells him to take his tired act elsewhere.

It’s unlikely executives at Showtime would temporarily enter the Mayweather business because they’d know they’re being used as an outlet for Mayweather to participate in a bout boxing fans wouldn’t support nearly as much as what would certainly be the biggest fight of the 21st century.

Forget Mayweather’s claim that he’ll fight in Dubai, too.

Fighting there won’t work logistically for American television, and Mayweather’s make-believe promotional company doesn’t have the infrastructure in place to produce a fight of that magnitude. He’d need the manpower and the financial assistance of HBO Sports, Golden Boy Promotions, Don King and/or some other experienced promoter/company to pull it off.

Mayweather claims, too, that we need not worry about any of this, that he is just taking a little rest before getting ready to pummel Pacquiao.

“I’m on vacation for about a year, about a year,” Mayweather said during the Ustream video. “As soon as I come off vacation, then we’re going to cook that little, young chump. We ain’t worried about that. So, so family ain’t got to worry about me fighting the midget. Don’t worry about it. … Now once I kick the midget ass, once I kick the midget ass, I don’t want y’all to jump on my [expletive]. So y’all better get on the bandwagon right now. Because once I kick the midget ass, I don’t want y’all jumping on my [expletive], saying, ‘Aw [expletive], Floyd, we knew you was gonna do it.’ ”

It’s easy for Mayweather to predict Pacquiao’s demise while his pound-for-pound nemesis is headed toward training camp for another fight. It’ll be harder for him to find another excuse to avoid Pacquiao if the Filipino southpaw defeats Margarito.

Pacquiao said he eliminated Mayweather’s justification for not fighting him March 13 by agreeing to random drug testing if they would’ve fought Nov. 13 or Nov. 20.

“We agreed to all his demands,” Pacquiao said during a press conference Wednesday in New York, “because I want to know if that’s his real reason [for not taking the fight].”

Mayweather didn’t even bother offering a reason for not fighting Pacquiao this time around. He instead insisted Haymon wasn’t negotiating on his behalf, that he’s on vacation, that he’s not considering fighting anyone right now, not just Pacquiao.

He only talked about Pacquiao making him “sushi rolls” and how he’d cook up Pacquiao along with cats and dogs, a juvenile jab at Filipino people. He later alluded to Pacquiao taking “power pellets,” a reference to his unproven suspicion that Pacquiao has used performance-enhancing drugs.

Leaving no stupidity stone unturned, Mayweather also called Pacquaio a “faggot.” Just before the video ended, Mayweather seemed quite content, as if this embarrassing tantrum was a worthwhile emergence from his self-imposed summer exile.

For the sake of his four children and his fans, Mayweather would’ve been much better off remaining in hiding.


Source: http://www.boxingscene.com