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Rant shows Mayweather out of control
By Kevin Iole, Yahoo! Sports
14 hours, 8 minutes ago
No one should have been surprised by the hateful, racist, vitriolic rant that Floyd Mayweather Jr. released Thursday on a video-sharing site in which he went into an angry tirade against Manny Pacquiao.
Floyd Mayweather Jr. went on a racist rant at Manny Pacquiao online.
Mayweather referred to Pacquiao as a “yellow chump,” “a midget” and said “Once I stomp the midget, I’ll make that (expletive) make me a sushi roll and cook me some rice,” in a hard-to-watch video he apparently recorded live on uStream.com on Thursday. He also alluded to his belief that Pacquiao uses performance-enhancing drugs, noting the fight will occur when Pacquiao quits, as he calls it, taking “them power pellets.”
None of this is surprising because there has been no accountability in Mayweather’s camp for far too long. From the time he booted his father out of his home and repossessed a vehicle his father was driving, to his characterization of a $12.5 million contract offer from HBO as “slave wages,” Mayweather has been allowed to run unchecked.
The result is a man who has become out of touch with reality, who has lived a fairy tale to stroke his own ego. He’s pretended twice in the last several years he’d sign with promoter Don King because he was desperate for attention. He showed up at a San Diego race track and told Robin Leach that he would fight in Dubai because he craves the headlines. He’s a man desperate for friends because he knows all too well that most of the friends he has, he has purchased and that they won’t be there for him if he ever really needs them.
It was reminiscent, though far worse, of Mike Tyson’s post-fight rant on Showtime a decade ago following a knockout victory over Lou Savarese, when he threatened to eat Lennox Lewis’ children. At least, though, Tyson fought Lewis. Mayweather twice in the last year has had an opportunity to face Pacquiao in the ring and both times has walked away.
He puffed out his chest and bellowed in front of a computer while Pacquiao was thousands of miles away, promoting a fight against Antonio Margarito, yet another man Mayweather declined to fight.
Mayweather spends a lot of money, but clearly he doesn’t spend it on wise counsel. Too many persons close to him have whored themselves out and ignored his increasingly irrational behavior because of his ability to generate money. As a result, his ego has swollen out of control and he’s lost all sense of perspective. They’ve turned their heads to his often bizarre and distasteful behavior because he could increase the bottom line in their checking accounts.
That is about to change, to be sure. His corporate sponsors are going to run faster than Usain Bolt. It’s not likely that AT&T and Reebok, two Fortune 500 companies who have sponsored Mayweather, will ignore his words. You can count on the fact that his career with them is effectively already over. It’s going to be a brave company who would ever want to associate its brand with his name.
It won’t, sadly, affect a thing in his boxing career. If he decides he wants to fight Pacquiao, the only man other than himself with a legitimate claim as boxing’s best fighter, the match will quickly be put together and Thursday’s sickening video will be relegated to the history books.
That’s how boxing is. It essentially sells the car wreck.
Mayweather is surrounded daily by yes men and sycophants who will be nowhere to found when the gravy train runs dry. Mayweather scoffs at suggestions he’ll ever have financial difficulties – and hopefully for his children’s sake, he will not – but he need look no further than Tyson to realize it’s far from impossible to blow a $400 million fortune.
Leonard Ellerbe, Mayweather’s best friend and the CEO of his company, Mayweather Promotions, has been conspicuously silent. So, too, is his primary adviser, Al Haymon, one of the most powerful men in boxing. Through their silence, they condone his hate-filled words.
Throughout the video, Mayweather repeatedly thanked his fans, though anyone who would remain a fan after watching that performance has to be depraved.
Manny Pacquiao was busy promoting his Antonio Margarito fight on Friday.
The video depicts Mayweather as a short-sighted, small-minded man who doesn’t have the attention span of a 3-year-old. In it, he insists he’s on a vacation that he says could last longer than a year and says he has no urge to box now. He doesn’t have the self control to leave it at that.
Clearly, he’s jealous of the attention and star treatment Pacquiao is receiving, so in the next breath, he intimated he would return to fight Pacquiao.
“I’m on vacation for a year, about a year,” Mayweather said. “As soon as we come off vacation, we’re going to cook that little yellow chump. We ain’t worried about that. So they ain’t got to worry about me fighting the midget. Once I kick the midget’s (expletive), I don’t want you all to jump on my (expletive). You better get on the bandwagon now.”
The 41-0 record, the world championships and the pay-per-view successes will be forgotten in time. It will be the hateful, racist words in this temper tantrum that will endure as the legacy of Floyd Joy Mayweather Jr.
Whatever happens, Mayweather should know that he’s done this to himself. But when the inevitable fall comes, he should remember that his so-called friends didn’t care enough to try to stop it.
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