Yes I Am, No I’m Not: Money May is at it Again

“Yesterday I was lying, today I’m telling the truth.” So said Bob Arum while shooting the breeze with a gaggle of reporters in a Syracuse hotel room.

It’s been 38 years since Arum uttered that phrase but it has stuck to him like a barnacle. To some, the first part of that line, the part about lying, is the perfect tagline for the Machiavellian sport of prizefighting.

Floyd “Money” Mayweather has taken this off-the-cuff remark to a new level. He’s as mercurial as the weather on a tropical island.

Earlier this week, Mayweather told Reuters correspondent Rory Carroll that he was done with boxing: “I’ve got calls to get back into the ring, but my health is my wealth (and) boxing is a very, very brutal sport…You have got to know when to hang it up. I had a great career.”

The story made the rounds. Other web sites pounced on it as if this were a major news story. A rival site, although it had no new information, told its readers that Mayweather’s decision was firm.

It wasn’t until yesterday (Thursday, Nov. 21) that the story bubbled up on the CBS Sports web page. “Floyd Mayweather says he is officially done with the ‘brutal sport’ of boxing” ran the headline above the regurgitation. Then, later that day, Floyd Mayweather took to his Instagram account to announce that he would be returning next year.

“Dana White and I are working together again to bring the world another spectacular event in 2020,” he wrote shortly after uploading a photo of himself and the UFC poobah seated side-by-side at an NBA game between the Celtics and Clippers in Los Angeles.

So, two Floyd Mayweather stories appeared on the same day, one contradicting the other. And of the two, the second story, Floyd’s retraction, as it were, has the most credence.

Floyd, soon to be 43, has stayed in great shape, but beyond that it was almost certain that we hadn’t seen the last of him. For one thing, he knows that, if he so chooses, he can rake in a big pile of dough without working very hard. The most grueling aspect of his encounter with Conor McGregor was the four-city pre-fight international tour. When the bell rang, it was a stroll in the park.

That sham of a fight — less a sporting event than a pop culture phenomenon — attracted the second-highest number of pay-per-view buys in the history of combat sports (trailing only Mayweather-Pacquiao). The live gate was more than the two Canelo-GGG fights combined.

Beyond that, whatever returns Floyd gets on his investments and whatever income accrues from his various businesses, it’s unlikely to be enough to keep him from eventually running out of money unless he tones down his ostentatious lifestyle. The great baseball pitcher Sandy Koufax retired at the age of 30 and came to rue that decision. “When I left baseball,” said Koufax, “I had enough money to last the rest of my life but I discovered that was only true if I stopped spending.”

Floyd is reportedly one of only three athletes (Tiger Woods and Michael Jordan are the others) to have made over $1 billion in career earnings. But he spends money like there’s no tomorrow, buying a lot of stuff such as gaudy jewelry that depreciates in value as soon as he walks out the door. No, it’s not absurd to think that he could outlive his money. He has no bad habits that could shorten his life span so he figures to live to a ripe old age. Yes, the day of reckoning is a long way off, but it will eventually come unless Floyd reels in his appetite for expensive toys and makes a few more big scores and that means getting back in the ring.

Predictably, the idea of Mayweather coming back has fomented a backlash. Nate Scott, the managing editor of a site called “For The Win,” a USA Today affiliate, says, “At a certain point, watching an aging man dodge punches isn’t that thrilling anymore. It becomes rote. Not to mention he’s a reprehensible person.”

On social media, Scott’s sentiment is widely shared.

But the reality is that whether one likes Floyd or not, he’s newsworthy and the media won’t tire of writing about him so long as his very name is clickbait. Yes, journalists want to write serious stories, but they are also under pressure to write stuff that attracts eyeballs. The eyeballs pay the bills.

And from Floyd’s point of view, there’s that old saw that says that all publicity is good publicity so long as one’s name is spelled correctly. He revels in playing the role of the heel and every time someone bashes him it translates into a few more bucks when he turns up again with his gloves on.

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