Should Floyd Mayweather’s Domestic Abuse History Affect His Boxing Career?
Two things are undeniably true about Floyd Mayweather Jr. One: he is a supremely talented boxer, deservedly undefeated and potentially one of the greatest of all time. Two: he is a convicted domestic abuser, and is arrogant and unrepentant about it.
Dating back to 1996, Mayweather has fought 47 times and has won each and every one of them. 26 by knockout, 21 by decision. He holds WBA, WBC and The Ring Welterweight and Light Middleweight world titles and is preparing to fight for the WBO Welterweight title when he faces Manny Pacquiao in the most anticipated bout in a generation.
Dating back to 2001, Mayweather has been convicted 5 times for striking women. Four times between 2001 and 2003, and then once most seriously in 2010 where he was convicted of domestic battery, and sentenced to 90 days in prison. Mayweather’s people were able to broken a plea deal that lessened the charge to misdemeanour battery. He served his prison sentence (60 days with good behaviour), along with community service, a $2500 fine and entered a year-long domestic violence program.
After getting out of jail, Mayweather picked up a new deal with Showtime Sports (a subsidiary of CBS Sports), having spent his pay-per-view career to that point fighting on HBO cards. He signed for 30 months and six fights, the Pacquiao bout will be the fifth of those fights. Already the highest paid athlete in the world before his prison term, he returned to society to sign the most lucrative sporting contract in history. It’s not that he’s being rewarded for his despicable past, the guy’s getting paid for his cosmic talent in the ring and in the ring alone, but when you see a guy succeeding so openly and proudly like that, there’s a legitimate feeling of a lack of justice.
It might just be a sad reflection on our culture that if you have enough money then you can control your public image. Not entirely, but enough that you can avoid having to answer the tough questions. When asked by ESPN's John Barr recently what message the lack of sanctions or suspensions he’s ever had to face from any governing body. This was his direct response:
“Honestly, I want everybody to tune in, May 2nd. Mayweather vs. Pacquiao. This is the fight that you can’t miss.”
Did he even hear the question? He dodged it as nonchalantly as he dodges punches, just lean back and show ‘em something else. His entire entourage is trained to play down that side of things too. And in a way, that’s justified, since they are his boxing entourage not his lawyers, there to help him with his professional life. But then look at the way Floyd treats some of those people too and it ain’t pretty either.
Floyd’s father is one of his biggest defenders. This is a man who was arrested for dealing drugs when Floyd Jr was a child and served five years behind bars, sending Junior to live with his grandmother during that time as his mother battled heroin addiction. If this sounds like shaming then that’s only fair since that’s what they’ve done to Floyd’s victims. Talking to Katie Couric, Mayweather described the incident that led to his incarceration as such:
“Did I restrain a woman that was on drugs? Yes, I did. So if they say that’s domestic violence, then, you know what? I’m guilty. I’m guilty of restraining a person.”
That’s what he said. This is what the police report said: Josie Harris, ex-partner of Mayweather and mother of three of his four children, came home from a night out to find Floyd inside her home talking to her children. Harris and Mayweather got into an argument over the man she had been seeing and she called the police as he became ‘upset and loud’. The police came and asked Mayweather to leave. He argued that he owned the house and Harris should leave, but then accepted the procedure that the police had to go through. This was at 2.30am. At 5am he returned with a male friend. Harris awoke to ‘Mayweather yelling at her and holding her cellphone and reading text messages on her phone’. She admitted to being in a relationship with the man on the other end of the text messages, upon when ‘Mayweather pulled Harris off the couch by her hair and began striking her in the back of her head with a closed fist several times.’ It was his eleven year old son that broke it up by getting help from a neighbour and apartment security.
There’s a definite disparity between those two statements.
Except, once more, what’s this got to do with his boxing career? It’s a similar tricky debate as happens with political scandals, for example. If Mayor Carcetti is having an affair, should that affect his ability to do his job? Or is it irrelevant? That’s slightly different, because he would be an elected official and to suddenly appear deceptive and untrustworthy is a real issue. We don’t tend to do too well with contradictions in people, it’s a very human tendency to categorise everything, but with Floyd Mayweather he actually is both a legendary sportsman and a terrible person and the two sides of him exist in different spaces.
The main reason this is becoming an issue is because of Mayweather’s success. He’s involved in a fight so big that it’s capturing mainstream attention. These aren’t new accusations, they’re old ones that in one case he’s already served a prison sentence for (whether or not it was sufficient, it was still a court ruling). Except that now people who wouldn’t regularly care about an upcoming Mayweather fight now are being exposed to the whole media circus that follows him around within the boxing community, the domestic abuse stuff is new to them. It wouldn’t be a factor if he were fighting some lesser known challenger.
But at the same time, although he did face legal prosecution, it’s beyond doubt that Mayweather has gotten off easy. And it’s ridiculous that he’s able to waltz through interviews slandering his victims and avoiding ever having to face or be accountable for his past mistakes. Most of the criticism here is coming back to the fact that no boxing organisation has taken any action. That’s kind of a naïve point of view, because the boxing administration world is highly segmented – just look at how many different heavyweight title belts there are. This isn’t a case of a singular governing body holding sole power of conviction. Even if it were we’ve seen with the NFL how easy it is to fumble that duty (and, granted, how precarious it is to police). Nobody’s gonna suspend Floyd Mayweather, not before accounting for all the money and exposure he brings his sport and certainly not afterwards.
And boycotting the fight isn’t gonna make him a better person. Nor is it gonna aid victims of domestic abuse, even as an act of solidarity. It’s like becoming a vegetarian because you think bullfighting is inhumane. You’re either only punishing yourself by missing the biggest fight probably since before Muhammad Ali retired or it’s a completely empty gesture because you weren’t gonna watch it anyway. Likewise watching and enjoying the bout doesn’t make you an apologist for his actions, nor are you in any way enabling his out-of-ring actions. That’s just guilt tripping.
Anyway, Floyd Mayweather doesn’t care about playing the villain, he’ll do it gladly. Manny Pacquiao’s a public servant in the Philippines, he cares about his image. His trainer, Freddie Roach, has made it clear in interviews that Manny is strongly against domestic violence (a brave position…). He’s even been feeding Manny details of Floyd’s history to fire him up. Not that Floyd cares. You label him a criminal and he’ll go count his money. Is that right? There is no right. The world’s a complicated place.
To be honest, this all stems from Mayweather’s seeming lack of remorse. If he had owned up to his past instead of avoiding it at every turn, if he had issued apologies and made an effort to show us he’d changed, then he’d be a more tolerable person. It wouldn’t erase what he did, but it’d at least give us some hope that he isn’t also gonna beat on the next woman to cross him too. Unfortunately he doesn’t see the need to, he owns the bad guy image and he doesn’t care. Yet watch him fight from a boxing purist’s point of view and it’s a glorious sight. His defence is incredible, his jabs so clinical. He’s a massively disciplined competitor with a near flawless technique. Floyd Mayweather is the best example of the Sweet Science that exists anymore and seeing him fight is an absolute treat.
He’s both a brilliant fighter and a terrible person. You don’t have to accept the whole package, the two sides are separate.
Floyd Mayweather and Manny Pacquiao step into the ring this weekend for the biggest boxing spectacle in decades, a bout set to shatter viewing and revenue records. Floyd’s impenetrable defence against Manny’s brutal attack. Convicted felon against public servant. It feels like a perfect battle between good and evil but things are never really that simple.