It’s business as usual for serial abuser
The spokeswoman from FanDuel was having trouble answering the question. Not her fault, really, because others involved with Floyd Mayweather Jr. struggle with the same thing.
In the fantasy gaming website’s case it was this: Why would any company attach its name — literally in FanDuel’s case — to a fighter who has a history of beating women?
The spokeswoman paused, trying to find the right words.
“Of course FanDuel doesn’t condone any of Floyd’s prior incidents,” she finally said. “But as a sports entertainment company we will be front and centre at one of the biggest sporting events in the history of boxing.”
No need to make moral judgments. Not when there’s business to be done with a fighter expected to make some $180 million US Saturday night in boxing’s richest fight ever.
FanDuel will be the only sponsor on Mayweather’s trunks when he fights Manny Pacquiao, but the company is not alone in tying itself to the unbeaten fighter. Showtime, which is owned by CBS, had no problem signing Mayweather to a huge contract despite his problems outside the ring, and the MGM Grand not only hosts Mayweather’s fights but often has his image draped across the outside of its building.
Meanwhile, celebrities and high rollers aren’t thinking twice about paying $10,000 for a floor seat to see and be seen at his biggest fight.
Business as usual, in a sport where these kinds of things tend to be tolerated. And there is no bigger business right now than a fight that will make a lot of people rich and Mayweather even richer.
If the storyline of this fight, as Pacquiao trainer Freddie Roach suggests, is good versus evil, it’s easy to tell the fighters apart. Pacquiao is a born-again Christian who quotes Bible verses. He is a congressman back home in his native Philippines.
Mayweather is a great boxer who can’t keep his hands off the women in his life. He has been charged on at least five occasions on domestic abuse allegations, including the 2010 attack on the mother of three of his children that landed him in jail for two months.
“When Manny beats Mayweather, it won’t only be about unifying the welterweight titles,” Roach said. “It will also be a public service to boxing.”