The Las Vegas bout between Floyd Mayweather Jr. and Manny Pacquiao did not need a title belt on the line to amp up the hype – that had been taken care of by the fact that the fight was about three years overdue.
You might be forgiven for forgetting this but Floyd actually won the WBO welterweight title during the May 2 fight, although it seems he cares less about that than the monster payday he raked in. The problem Floyd faced (and it’s a nice problem to have) is that it is against the sanctioned organisation’s rules to have a boxer holding world titles in multiple weight classes, although he didn’t seem much bothered. Below from ESPN:
Typically, the WBO will allow a fighter 10 days to decide which weight class he wants to continue to hold the title in, if he wins one in another weight division. The WBO gave Mayweather major leeway — two months…
Mayweather, who holds two other alphabet welterweight world titles, let come and go the 4:30 p.m. ET Friday deadline by which he had to pay a $200,000 sanctioning fee from the May 2 fight (for which he earned more than $220 million) and vacate the two junior middleweight titles he also holds.
With that deadline having passed the WBO championship committee then got involved, voting yesterday to strip Mayweather of the belt for failure to comply. Floyd and his teams’ response? Predictable really:
“It’s a complete disgrace,” Mayweather Promotions CEO Leonard Ellerbe [said]. “Floyd will decide what, or if any, actions he will take. But in the meantime he’s enjoying a couple of hundred million he made from his last outing and this has zero impact on anything he does.
“Floyd Mayweather has a great deal of respect for each and every organization, as he has always had in his 19-year career, but he will not be dictated to by any organization or person as it relates to his decision making.”
Well those are kind of the rules for everyone ‘Money’, even though you’re the highest earning entertainer of the past 12 months you must still abide by them.
[source:espn]
