I can be a bit cynical at times and a part of me believes that Mayweather knew exactly what he was doing when he went on his racist rant against Manny Pacquiao (watch it here).
Mayweather knew that Pacquiao was in the middle of a press tour for his fight against Antonio Margarito and wanted to upstage him.
With his name in the news for all the wrong reasons, Mayweather now offers an apology and says he was “just playing”. Here are the details:
“I do want to apologize for what happened the other night,” Mayweather said. “I want to apologize to everybody. They felt it was a racist comment that came from me. I don’t have a racist bone in my body, you know. I love everybody. Some of my guys are Muslims. Some of my guys are Jews. Puerto Ricans, Dominicans, Mexicans, whites, it doesn’t matter. There is nothing but love in my heart, you know what I’m saying?
“I heard this from a few people. The only thing I want to say is, anybody who was offended by what I said the other day, I apologize as a man. I apologize. Forgive me for saying what I said. I was just having fun. I didn’t really mean it, nothing in a bad way. So let’s stay on this roller coaster ride and keep riding, baby. It’s all love.”
If you take Mayweather at his word, he was just being an idiot on camera, but I believe he plotted the whole thing.
This is boxing we are talking about, where promotion is king.
If the fight between Mayweather and Pacquiao ever happens (I am not holding my breath) there is a large majority of the population who would just purchase the PPV praying that Mayweather loses.
Could Floyd be playing us all?
Did he always know that he wanted to fight Pacquiao in 2011, knowing that Manny will have just come off a fight in November?
Could be trying to make himself one of the most hated athlete in sports because he knows that will drive up the PPV numbers?
I don’t have the answer to that, but what I do know if he doesn’t fight Pacquiao at some point it will haunt the legacy that he treasures more than all the money he likes to flash.