I had talked about Floyd Mayweather and when we talked last, which was Wednesday, as of
then Floyd Mayweather, and we recorded the show very early in the morning, but Floyd
Mayweather was scheduled to be fighting on the New Year's Eve show in Rizin.
The large consensus from you guys is you smell the skunk at the garden party.
I was on the other side of it and said, “No, I don't think so,” and the reason I did
not think so is because of the black eye that it would give to Floyd’s brand to have to
tuck and run after a fight announcement and that is not in line with the history of Floyd
Mayweather.
He does a number of things for publicity.
Good for him.
He's in that business.
No fault.
But he's never announced a fight before that he wasn’t going to do.
Also if you follow Floyd’s career, and I do, one of the things that I've always appreciated
from a fan—I'm talking about the fan perspective in me—is when Floyd announces a fight there
is no long lead-in and run-up.
He does everything very quickly.
Just to put that in perspective, if you guys will remember when he fought Manny Pacquiao,
even though that turned into a fight that left a little bit to be desired, the buildup
and the anticipation for that fight was about five years, and when he finally announced
that he was going to box Manny Pacquiao they were in the ring throwing punches at each
other five-and-a-half weeks later.
So Floyd follows a little bit of a different formula and a little bit of a different recipe
that I for one like when I hear those mega-fights and I hear that they're finally going to happen.
It is so nice when you don’t have to wait all that long.
So all of those things were in line with Floyd going to Rizin.
I'm also a little bit more aware of Floyd’s circumstances and situations than some because
I'm in the fight game.
I understand the embellishment of his pay-per-view numbers and I understand the embellishment
of his net worth.
But the one thing about Floyd’s income is the outcome – while the embellishment of
how much he makes and it gets gobbled up and reported by the media, it is very true how
much he spends.
I have told you guys from day one he is not retired.
He does not have the choice to retire.
Floyd will have to fight again, and after he does that fight he will have to fight again
after that.
He will be like every other fighter whose story does not end well because they spend
it like they're always going to make it.
Talking about money over here is never something comfortable, but when the guy is a prized
fighter whose nickname is Money, it becomes a little bit more relevant and a little bit
more fair game – by me.
It becomes very fair game for me to point out that he is going to fight for money, however
much he can get, and while he will continue to make you guys believe that that's a hundred-plus
million, he will still get very good paydays but that will go backwards and backwards and
backwards like everybody else, like absolutely everybody else.
But one of the reasons that I initially was a little bullish that this was going to happen
is I know his worth in North America and I know how much it has greatly diminished, and
I knew that going over to Japan and if any point in—that was not going to be great.
That was going to be a big sign right there.
When you're selling out T-Mobile Arena and all of a sudden you're fighting at 3 a.m.
for your North American fans where nobody’s going to watch and you're counting on an entirely
different market to carry you, it's going—listen, call a guy Captain Obvious, you don’t have
to put on your Columbo rain jacket to figure out that's because things aren't great, but
that's the trajectory of a career.
I've seen it a million times.
Floyd will not be any different from anybody else.
But when I was to juxtapose that against what would happen if that did not come to fruition,
what would be the upside to dipping your toe on that side of the pond and in that market
and arena and then turning away and refusing to do it?
That would be very bad.
Listen, it hurt the Floyd “Money” Mayweather brand that he was going to go and do the fight
in Rizin, and where there could have been some level of excitement and some level of
circus show and attraction to it—and for sure there was, not enough to pencil and not
enough to make sense for a brand in Floyd Mayweather—it was going to be bad either
way.
It was going to be terrible if the fight did not happen.
That was my detective work and that is why I believed that it was going to happen.
Floyd must watch this, and I realize the power and worth of this show and I am very grateful
for it, but you guys are included in that, okay?
We have a lot of opinions and a lot of ideas and we have a message that gets out and gets
heard by the masses within this space.
But as soon as we talked about it, Floyd then came out and said, “Okay, listen, the deal’s
off.
As a matter of fact, the deal was never on and I never agreed to fight the guy.”
That is as good of a cover-up job if you can do, save one problem – Floyd was on camera
in the press release.
It wasn’t just in print, lost in translation between the Japanese language and the American
language.
He was on camera agreeing to fight the guy in Rizin on New Year's Eve.
So to try to un-fry that egg and say, “There was a miscommunication and I never agreed
to the fight,” is not good.
It's very bad for Floyd, and once you say, “I will do it for a dollar,” it's very
hard to come back to the table and say, “I won't do it unless I get $10.”
It's a very hard thing to do.
For Floyd to have agreed to fight in Rizin, whose numbers and model of pay-per-view, of
digital, of live gate, of television, is vastly different than any other form of competition
that he has done before.
For him to say that he would do that, you're now understanding the guy that used to make
$10 is now going to make one.
For him to go over there and agree to it means he tested the waters and the pool of the old
business model that he knew here in North American and it was no longer there.
The market just wasn’t there.
He's in a very tough spot right now and he's made it very clear that he's fighting for
money and that he's willing to fight for very little money.
That's just a tough spot.
This is the reality of what happened Floyd, okay?
I think that Floyd in many ways is in an unfair position.
Look, a piece of the formula, and you will see this a number of times when you want to
talk about formulas in fighting, but you will see a number of times where a guy wants to
have what’s known as a comeback fight, but the only way to have a comeback is to retire
first.
Okay, great.
And that story’s been done and that script has been written and that song has been played
a number of times successfully, but all of the successful ones have one component and
this is what some guys miss—and this is what Chuck Liddell missed, in fairness, to
his comeback fight going on with Tito or possibly that fight just happened, Chuck and Tito—and
now Mayweather’s being a victim of it as well, which is when you retire, if you want
to have the big comeback fight, you must retire at a time when the media and the audience
and the fans and the supporters and your base and your market are saying, “No, my good—what
are you doing?
Why are you retiring?
You're so good.
You're so skilled.
You have so much left.
You have so much more to offer.
You can still beat everybody.”
So when Floyd retired after the Conor fight—and I think this was unfair.
I think this was unfair that this happened to Floyd.
But the boxing world said, “Yes, you should retire.
You have nothing left to offer us.
Your better days are well behind you.
We have come to that conclusion because you're the greatest fighter of a generation.
You're the greatest fighter of an entire era.
You're an undefeated multiple-time world champion and you just went a half-hour with an amateur
who should not have been in there with you, who's never put on 16-ounce gloves and stepped
in the ropes before, who was not even licensed to do this, whose sanctioning of this bout
called into question the integrity of an entire commission who made it very clear that they
were not about fighter safety – they were about revenue.”
In hindsight, everything worked out.
I'm just telling you, leading into this fight, that's what this was about.
That's how hard this was.
That's what a tough sell it was to get Floyd and Conor together.
It was that ridiculous.
The greatest to have ever done it is taking on a guy who had never done it.
Instead of the story being told correctly, which was, “Wow, great job, Conor.
You possessed a skill set that we did not you have”—that's how the story should
have been told.
Unfortunately, it just wasn’t.
Unfortunately, okay—and Floyd retired immediately, that very night.
He went in the back, he showered up, he grabbed his check, he changed his clothes, he put
on his sunglasses, and he cut interviews saying, “I am done.
I am retired,” and I will quote, “No young fighter call me out.
You're not going to get it.
I am truly done.”
Those are the quote unquote of Floyd Mayweather.
When he did that, not having any time or ability to digest what had just happened, with the
understanding that perception is reality so the perception of what happened is going to
become the reality of what happened, fair or unfair, it was at a time when the response
to the boxing world, to the media, even to the naysayers of MMA that wanted to see Conor
get beat up in less than three minutes, the response to justify and explain how the greatest
ever just had a hard night and needed over a half an hour to get rid of a bum who had
never been in there, the answer to that, instead of giving Floyd the credit he deserved, which
is he went from plan A to plan B to plan C, he adjusted, he dealt with diversity, he lost
a lot of minutes, a lot of combinations, a lot of rounds, had Conor take his biggest
shots, had to then take Conor’s biggest shots—it was a really hard night.
Floyd deserved a lot of credit.
But instead of getting any of that, the answer that the boxing enthusiasts had was, “Well,
yeah, Floyd’s done.
Floyd’s an old man.
Floyd shouldn't have even been in there tonight.
He came off his couch, went in there, and yeah, he had a little bit of a hard time,
but that's the only reason he had a hard time.
The only reason he had a hard time is because he's an old Floyd Mayweather.
I mean, just listen to Floyd.
Floyd just said he's going to retire.
Floyd knew he was going to retire going into this.
As a matter of fact, he basically was retired.”
They used that narrative as a way of explaining to themselves—to themselves—that the sweet
science that they believed was a lifetime of work was just put to the test by an amateur
who should not have even been licensed to be in there and was tested for over 10 rounds—in
10 rounds.
You get the point.
I think that was unfair to do to Floyd, but perception is reality and that was the perception,
and it was a lot easier to come to that and use a scapegoat in Floyd Mayweather in conjunction
with his retirement than a reality of, “Hey, listen, if you get a big tough young guy in
there with you that knows how to use his hands and isn't afraid to push hard and deep and
make things ugly and go into a street fight, you can give the greatest boxer of all time
some real problems.”
What should have been a compliment to Conor wasn’t.
I don’t suggest for you guys that that was fair.
What I do is accurately lay this—I've never seen a sporting event in my entire life, my
entire existence, where the reality of what we saw has been more rewritten by the media
but reaccepted by the viewer.
I've never seen it, and I think that Floyd is a victim of it.
But to explain to you guys how detrimental to Floyd’s future career this mistake was
that he would go to Japan, hold a press conference, announce a fight, allow money to be spent—there
are videos out there of this.
There are highlight reels.
They're advertising and they're promoting this.
And to yank the card—the fact that he went over there in the first place means he doesn’t
have a seat in the table in America right now.
That is 100% what it means.
HBO has announced they're out of the boxing business.
Floyd’s contract was with Showtime in conjunction with T-Mobile Arena.
He fought his last fight on Showtime and his last fight at T-Mobile Arena.
There has been speculation saying Showtime soon is going to get out of the boxing business.
I don't know that to be true.
I just know there are a lot of places to box right now.
I know Fox has a big presence, I know ESPN has a big presence, I know DAZN has a big
presence in boxing right now.
So opportunities for boxers certainly do exist, but it wouldn't matter even if you were the
big name and the great résumé of Floyd Mayweather.
If you had a contract and you were boxing on Showtime and Showtime, if the rumors are
true, is looking to get out of boxing, then you're going to need a new home.
It would seem as though that wouldn't be the hardest thing for Floyd to go and get, but
the fact that Floyd popped up in Japan ready to do a special-rules match, I mean, Floyd’s
own words, he goes, “I never agreed to a match.
It was supposed to be an exhibition.”
I don’t give a goddamn what you want to call it, Floyd.
I don't care if you want to call it a sparring session.
You agreed to do it, you said you were going to do it, and the fact that you were going
to do it in a mixed fight situation, a special-rules as they had called it, whatever those changes
in the rules were going to be to add to the spectacle of it, whether you want to call
it an exhibition, a sparring session or a live competition, it doesn’t matter.
The fact that you had to go to Japan and outside of your comfort zone and do it in this kind
of a format is not great for the brand.
Making it worse is then refusing to do it after you agreed to do it, and making that
a triple down worse is coming out and denying on camera that you ever said you would do
it when we all found out you were going to do it by you going on camera and saying you
were.
This is a very, very bad and bumbled situation.
I do not expect a lot from Floyd Mayweather.
What a brilliant boxer.
That is where the “brilliant” term goes out when discussing Floyd.
There are not a lot of other things you can compliment for his intelligence.
But somebody thought this was a good idea.
Somebody in the PR department or the marketing department, somebody that Floyd listens to,
thought this was a good idea, and it was a terrible idea from the jump even had it gone
through.
Even had it gone through.
And when I spoke to you guys about this on Wednesday, very quickly Floyd was singing
a different tune and I have to take credit for that.
I had perspective and I had an insight on this that was offered by no other form of
media, absolutely nobody except yours truly, and you guys as well, us, we discussed it
here.
Within a matter of hours, Floyd came out singing a completely different tune.
All in all, if he could just rewind the tape a week and not have done this, it would have
been great because, if you were to rewind the tape five weeks ago, Floyd had also announced
that in December of this year he would be boxing Manny Pacquiao, a fight that Manny
had no idea about, quickly said, “Okay, good.
That sounds great,” but they had no venue, no tickets, no licenses, no agreement, no
distribution in place to do it.
One of the bigger embarrassments that Floyd has ever dealt with, whether he knows this
or not, but was through the creation and the made-up entity known as The Money Team, which
is Floyd Mayweather’s boxing promotion which simply does not exist.
I could tell you guys that until I was blue in the face.
I have begged for some of you to believe me when I tell you there is no such thing as
The Money Team.
There is no office, there is no capital, there are no distribution partners, there is no
poster department.
There is no promotional company known as The Money Team, and Floyd Mayweather can go to
Nevada and he could get licenses all that he wants, but when he can't put on his own
show when he's standing by a guy named Manny Pacquiao, where there is a level of business—it's
much smaller than he would lead you to believe but there is a level of business—when he
could not get that done and he owns allegedly a promotion company, that should have let
you guys see, “Oh my gosh, this is smoke and mirrors.”
When he then takes an agreement in Japan with a company called Rizin that does not put on
Western boxing, accepts that for less than 72 hours and runs that one back, that should
make it crystal clear for you young boxers, do not sign with something called The Money
Team.
They aren't real.
That is not a real team.
That is not Bellator.
That is not ONE Championship.
That is not UFC, WME-IMG.
That is not a real platform.
That is not a real place to go.
They do not have capital.
They do not sign the front of paychecks.
It is a gimmick that if you sign with you will be signing the front of paychecks.
The guys at The Money Team sign the back of paychecks.
They don’t take risks.
They don’t have plans.
They listen to this show, which is smart.
I appreciate that they do that and I'm giving them a little bit of tough love right now,
but the gig is up and The Money Team does not exist.