Last weekend, Mayweather Promotions presented the first monthly installment of their Sin City Showdown series at Sams Town Live in Las Vegas.
The first card on the monthly boxing series was supposed to be headlined by former junior welterweight contender Ashley Theophane, but the English boxer was pulled Friday for undisclosed reasons.
However, the real show came after new main event headliner Ronald Gavril won the vacant NABF super middleweight title over Christopher Brooker via TKO in the tenth round.
While being interviewed, the Money Team boss, Floyd Mayweather, Jr., spoke to The Boxing Voice and in a rare abandon of his usual moratorium on political issues, dished on his stance on the Black Lives Matter movement and Colin Kaepernick.
Im here to say all lives matter, Mayweather said. You know, a lot of times, we get stuck, and we are followers. When you hear one person say, Black lives matter, or blue lives matter, all lives matter.
Unfortunately for Mayweather the bubble of success he lives within has warped his understanding of the issues at hand. Like many who confuse the want for justice and fairness for people of the Diaspora, which is intended in the sentiment behind saying Black Lives Matter, Mayweather joins the fray that mistakenly think it admonishes any other sector of the populace.
However, it gets worse.
Its not right what is going on in this world on both sides, Mayweather said. What I learned from boxing and what everyone can take in real life is to follow directions, follow order. Dont give nobody a hard time.
(Photo Credit: USA Today)
These are the type of statements that confirm the accurate adage that celebrities are far from role models. As a lightning rod of controversy and the living example of excess, Mayweather shows just how sheltered his Money has kept him recently.
After a childhood rife with the intermittent loss of his father due to drug dealing convictions and coping with the drug addiction of his mother, you would think more than most, Floyd would have a better understanding. The war on drugs started by Richard Nixon, championed by Ronald Reagan and massaged by George Bush, Sr., eviscerated entire communities of its fathers.
The reality of the plan to exterminate the poor and make them neo-slaves via the opportunistically written 13th Amendment has been well documented by scholars such as Michelle Alexander in her book The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness.
To retort stating that Black lives matter in this world by stating All Lives Matter the way Mayweather did calls for an educational chin-check of epic proportions, as it infers that focusing on the primary recipients of police brutality, redlining, oppression and other socio-political machinations is wrong.
Mayweather has shielded himself in the aura of invincibility and believes that all you have to do in life is to follow directions, follow order to survive. He forgets to mention that his entire success model was formed around the polarizing image of him as the bad guy.
The ultimate classless Svengali thug who can whip your ass and then throw the profits right in your face. He used the anger of the white population at his excess and set up matches against opponents not in their prime like Ricky Hatton, Oscar De La Hoya and others championed by boxing fans, making a racially divisive face-off.
He calls himself The Best Ever for this manipulation and the proceeds he generated, all the while knowing secretly the riches came not from his true fans but from the world at large that wanted to see him, as the cocky black man, get what that thought he deserved, a beating.
As a fighter with impeccable defense and cat-like speed, I am in awe of Floyd Mayweather and salute his technical genius. As a man, I have lost much respect for this position. “The best ever is sufficient to discuss his potential place in boxing history. But his political opinion pure mediocrity.
Muhammad Ali was The Greatest because he knew who he was in the midst of the fame. He refused to follow directions or order, sacrificing his belt, money and potentially his freedom for his stance in the face of adversity.
Perhaps in retirement Money can read up on a true champion’s heart, for at last he has finally lost a fight.
