Folks, it’s time to stop smoking the hope-ium. We should have known it was way too good to be true when we saw Floyd Mayweather Jr at a RIZIN press conference. It was announced that he would face one of the best kickboxers alive Tenshin Nasukawa on New Year’s Eve to the surprise of everyone. You can read about it and watch it here. Immediately the questions arose about the legitimacy of it all, how could RIZIN afford to pay him what he usually gets, and most importantly what rules would it be under. MMA or boxing?
None of that matters now.
Today we got some very disappointing news about the fight via Floyd’s Instagram.
I want it to be clear that I, Floyd Mayweather, never agreed to an official bout with Tenshin Nasukawa. Ultimately, I was asked to participate in a nine-minute exhibition of three rounds with an opponent selected by the “Rizin Fighting Federation.” What I was originally informed of by Brent Johnson of “One Entertainment” was that this was to be an exhibition put on for a small group of wealthy spectators for a very large fee.
The timing is what has set the forums alive. Just as the rules for the fight were going to be discussed ‘Money’ gets amnesia. It was the consensus that he would change his tune on competing under MMA rules and demand it be boxing instead. He even had Chael P Sonnen fooled and that’s legit. So if this was a publicity stunt it worked to get his name out there but the MMA fans chanting his name for finally backing up his claims that he would compete in the sport are pissed off. Admittedly, so are we.
Floyd, step in the cage or step off.