by David P. Greisman
This seems as appropriate time as any to have this conversation, what with the number of recent reports about professional athletes accused of domestic violence, and particularly as those storylines led to a renewed focus on Floyd Mayweather Jr. and his various cases and convictions.
It’s not that Mayweather’s history wasn’t known. He spent a couple of months in jail in 2012 after pleading guilty to misdemeanor battery and no contest to a pair of counts of harassment in a case that stemmed from an assault on an ex-girlfriend who is the mother of three of his children. His history came up this past summer after an article on the Deadspin sports website examined it in depth and with sometimes-graphic detail.
“Floyd Mayweather is a misogynist,” wrote Daniel Roberts. “And not just a misogynist, but a batterer, and a serial batterer at that.”
Mayweather has once again been accused of abuse in a civil lawsuit filed by former girlfriend Shantel Jackson, who often was known as “Ms. Jackson.” You don’t need to dive too deep into comments sections to see people participating in victim blaming, questioning her motives and labeling her as someone merely seeking money.
Jackson’s attorney called for a boycott of Mayweather’s pay-per-view bout the other week against Marcos Maidana. And Mayweather’s past came up in the days before, when the boxer for some reason decided to comment on the additional punishment that the NFL had handed down to football player Ray Rice after footage leaked of him knocking out his wife.
Mayweather was asked about his past a couple days before the pay-per-view in an interview with CNN’s Rachel Nichols, who pressed the boxer on answers that claimed there was no proof that he’d beaten women — despite the convictions and despite the number of allegations that have come from a number of victims. According to Chris Mannix of Sports Illustrated, Mayweather walked out of the CNN interview and then canceled his subsequent media obligations.
Apparently none of this mattered to consumers. Mayweather-Maidana 2 pulled in an estimated 925,000 pay-per-view buys. Mayweather earned another sizable payday. He has at least two more remaining. In boxing, where there is no team to let down, where networks and sponsors don’t face anywhere near the public pressure for supporting those who commit reprehensible acts, it remains true that money triumphs over principle.
Fighters on their way to jail or fresh out of prison have headlined pay-per-views. Boxers who tested positive for performance enhancing drugs return to television spotlights. This sport has a long history of being corrupt and criminal, and its fans and insiders wink and smile and pretend to believe that it’s part of its charm.
All of which is a shame, as boxers are just like other athletes in that they serve as role models, even if they don’t want to, even if they shouldn’t.
“I am not a role model. I am not paid to be a role model,” basketball player Charles Barkley said in a commercial two decades ago. “I am paid to wreak havoc on the basketball court.”
Back then, fellow NBA star Karl Malone had an appropriate response:
“We don't choose to be role models. We are chosen,” he wrote. “Our only choice is whether to be a good role model or a bad one.”
Boxers are role models in what they do both inside the ring and outside of it, through their best and worst moments. They influence others coming up in the sport and even those who never have any intention of lacing up the gloves.
Athletes have the kind of impact that we as a society wish were the same for professions such as teachers and firefighters. Barkley seemed to recognize this a dozen years after his commercial.
“When you’re a professional athlete, you don’t always see what’s going on around you because you have to have tunnel vision to compete with the best in the world at what you do,” he wrote in his book, Who’s Afraid of a Large Black Man? “So I’ve wondered if Tiger [Woods] knows how many black people play golf because of him, how the galleries have changed since he joined the tour, how much more inclusive the industry of golf has had to become.”
Later in the book, Barkley and co-author Michael Wilbon interviewed Jesse Jackson, who noted the societal heroism of athletes such as boxers Jack Johnson and Joe Louis and track athlete Jesse Owens.
There are stories to admire from boxing. There are the numerous young men who fight out of poverty, or took to the gym to get off the streets, or who are grinding away in a dangerous profession to support their families. There are guys like Bernard Hopkins who left prison and never went back, worked harder and remained more disciplined than others are willing to do, is always in shape, always with a firm grasp of what it takes to succeed.
There are those like Devon Alexander, whose friends and family members wound up in prison or dead but who knew that the Sweet Science was his path out. His story can be an example to young prospects like Gervonta Davis, a 19-year-old prospect from a rough part of Baltimore who says boxing and school can keep him out of trouble and now needs to live up to those words.
There was a 12-year-old named Adrien Broner who once told a television crew that he would be robbing people and breaking into cars if not for boxing. Broner wound up compiling his own criminal record even into adulthood, but he’s also earned millions of dollars in the sport.
Broner, like many young boxers, looked up to Mayweather; he still does. When Mayweather made it big by becoming an oversized personality who people either loved or hated but who they paid to see anyway, Broner sought to follow the formula. His ratings rose. He became an attraction. He failed to recognize that Mayweather, for all of his faults and character flaws and out-of-the-ring drama and escapades, is always in shape so that he can remain a star boxer, not just a star who happens to box. The discrepancy in work ethic showed with Broner ballooning between fights and losing focus during bouts.
Athletes may not choose to be role models, but they bear the responsibility anyway.
There’s a reason why guys like Mark McGwire and Barry Bonds were so disappointing. It wasn’t just because of the supposed sanctity of baseball and a sport built on statistics, but also because of the message sent to kids that cheating can pay off, that putting dangerous substances into your body can give you a competitive edge and perhaps more of a chance of making it from high school ball to college teams, from college into the minor leagues, and from the minors into the big show.
There’s a reason why Lance Armstrong’s downfall was such a big story beyond him being another bicyclist doping in a sport where doping is the culture. He was a hero to those battling cancer and an inspiration to the world, and his lack of morals and vicious campaigns to perpetuate his lies not only made him a fraud, but also subsequently diluted the positive role he had otherwise played.
Boxing needs to not accept dirty fighters as rugged, needs to not send a message that being willing to sustain potentially fatal punishment is OK, needs to remind people that there are repercussions for taking shortcuts in the gym or substance abuse or dangerously dehydrating yourself to make weight.
It needs to emphasize the good things that are being done. If Mayweather is going to complain that his good deeds in the community go unreported, then he needs to stop committing bad deeds and also make sure that his publicity team puts as much effort into spreading the word about his charitable doings as they do about his extravagant spending.
Very often in the space at the bottom of this column, I report on “Boxers Behaving Badly.” A longtime reader has asked me also to note those who, as boxing writer Martin Mulcahey once put it in his own regular feature, are “Boxers Giving More Than Punches to the Head.”
“Boxing tends to degrade itself,” the reader told me. “Please consider a counterbalance.”
I plan to do so. I need help with that. It’s sadly far too easy and far too common to find reports of boxers getting in trouble. I need help finding stories of fighters who are doing good, not just participating in photo ops but rather playing a positive role in society.
This is a violent sport, but it need not be a vile one.
The 10 Count will return soon.
“Fighting Words” appears every Monday on BoxingScene.com. Pick up a copy of David’s book, “Fighting Words: The Heart and Heartbreak of Boxing,” at http://bit.ly/fightingwordsamazon or internationally at http://bit.ly/fightingwordsworldwide . Send questions/comments via email at fightingwords1@gmail.com
