I've been a fan of Floyd Mayweather for a minute now. No matter what his antics are outside the ring - and how much his mouth runs like a faucet that spews immaturely ignorant statements of self-absorbed banter and lack of care for what you think of him - I think he's a great boxer. For that reason, I root for him to win. I love watching his precision punching, immaculate defense, and overall swagger while in the ring. You CANNOT take that from him no matter how much his persona outside the ring personifies all that is wrong with being young, rich, and not giving a "you-know-what." I guess that makes him all the more entertaining. Saturday night I watched the most anticipated fight in quite some time at my boy W-G's place. Among friends, with a cigar in my mouth and cognac in my cup, I got ready to settle in for what I knew would be a great fight. Needless to say, Floyd did not let me down. It seemed like there were a lot of people who thought that De La Hoya would win this fight, but my perspective was that unless he was the aggressor for 12 straight rounds, he wasn't going to win. Oscar seems to be too much of a thinker in the ring at times and not a brawler. Brawling would have been his best chance to beat Floyd. Prepare to go in there and stalk him for 12 rounds and try your best not to tire. That would have given the fans a great fight to watch and given him his best chance to win. Instead, he tried to out-box a boxer to no avail. And in the end, I think that is the reason he lost.
Though I was anxious to see the fight, during the fight I had the opportunity to have a small photo session with one of my favorite little ones in the whole wide world...
And of course I was forced to wear the sunglasses because she just had to get a picture of me in them...
Don't ask me why I insist on continuing to post embarrassing pictures of myself. Just don't.
Back to the fight though. From the entrance to the ring where he came out draped in the colors of the Mexican flag, wearing a sombrero, and obviously taunting the extremely PRO-De La Hoya crowd (he even had his boy Half-Dollar aka 50 Cent accompany him to the ring while rapping his latest release, "Straight to the Bank"), to the smiles he showedd during the fight when De La Hoya would get a rare good shot in on him, Floyd's personality and ability in the ring dominated the fight.
In the end, Floyd beat De La Hoya in a 12-round bout that really didn't measure up to all the hype and was a lot LESS close than the split decision would lead you to believe. After the fight, Floyd reiterated that he plans on retiring and in the most sensible thing I've heard come from his mouth the last 6 months or so he said that he'd like to spend more time with his kids. Finally, something seemingly human comes out of his mouth. But in the meantime, I'm sure he and 50 will be celebrating his win with some of that groupie love.
And speaking of groupie love, I can only imagine how much fun these guys had over the weekend in Vegas while attending Hov's party at Club TAO. Seriously though: Jay-Z, J.D., Nelly, Diddy, 50, Jeezy, Usher, AI, Zo, etc. It was some power players in there! That's a lot of Black Star Power in one place. A terrorist could have taken out a quarter of the black millionaire celebs in existence that night.
11 comments:
I didn't watch the fight but a coworker of mine told me about his ring entrance and said that he felt it was pretty racist of him to do. And then asked me how I would have felt had De La Hoya came into the ring wearing a coofy and some Kente` cloth. He had a good point...what do you think?
That's a good question Dane.
Personally, I think it was in poor taste for Floyd to do what he did. Racist, I am not sure I feel that way about it. If he would have worn a day laborer's uniform or something else that's stereotypically associated to hispanics, then that would have been racist. But the flag-flavored outfits they had on was more of a mockery than racism to me.
According to wikipedia..."Racism is any form of bigotry, prejudice, violence, oppression, stereotyping or other socially divisive practice whose primary basis is the concept of race."
But now that I read that and think about the sombrero, I think it may have very well been a racist move albeit not his intention. I think he is probably dumb enough to not realize that something like that could be construed as racist rather than just offensive. I'm sure he intended to be offensive and mock the culture, but racist I doubt he intended. But by intending on mocking the culture, it's inherently racist anyway. So I guess my answer (now that I've thought all this through) is yes. LOL.
As far as the kufi and Kente cloth thing, I probably would have been mad about that.
i didn't even watch the fight, saw Eric Roberson, but you know i heard a lot about the pre-fight stuff that actually bothers me you know...
from what i understand, Floyd has some Mexican heritage, his uncle was a fighter...so it wasn't meant to be racist (this is what i heard)
but you know Floyd did a whole lot of stuff that i was disappointed in with regard to how he presented his image to the masses...but that's just me...don't feel like i missed much and i love boxing so that's a good thing
Floyd has Mexican heritage????
Ironically enough, I saw Floyd on Jay Leno last night and he presented himself VERY well. Unlike what you saw leading up to the fight on the HBO special and in all the press conferences. It shows that he knows how to act in certain environments. That's what's really sad to me. It's that he knows better, but he chooses only to do better in certain environments. It's cool to have that street side (I got one too), but at a certain point in your life you reach a level of maturity where you realize that even around your boys you can't always talk that way. And as a celebrity, you have a certain social responsibility that's involuntarily placed on you because of the spotlight and media attention you garner. "I'm not a role model" is not an excuse. People should simply want to do better when they know better.
But I'm sure this is something all of us struggle with in some aspect of our lives anyway, so I can't single him out.
what was so interesting to me, was that one of the guys that was talking stated that his wife was white and that her community sees him as "our representative"
i know right
Anyone who looks at him as our representative is ignorant his/herself. Seriously, when there is a black man running for the presidency and you choose to make an obviously and unforgivingly self-absorbed person your representative for black people, what does that say about you as a person?
To me it says that you don't have the common sense to say, "There's a black guy running to be the leader of this country, I need to see what he's about" rather than going for the simplistic option of saying, "Well, this boxer guys all over the TV right now, he must embody what most black people are like". That's just dumb! That's like me saying that Paris Hilton is representative of white women. Plain ole' dumb.
I would like to believe that most non-Blacks see these guys as members of, but not overall representations of the Black community as a whole. I hope so anyway.
i think the reality is that stereotypes are still extremely prevalent and he only magnified that...
I agree that stereotypes are definitely still prevalent. And most stereotypes are based on some truth anyway. On top of that, we even facilitate a lot of the stereotypes that are out there.
However, one who has common sense, some education, and has been exposed to more than one or two people a any given race should be able to understand that one person is not indicative of everyone else who shares the same racial background. We all aren't like Barack and we all aren't like Floyd.
People are different and every race has it's stand-outs and it's not-so-super people. In the end, people are just people but because of the history of this country we all tend to have conscious and subconscious stereotypes and prejudices.
i know i'm late, but as soon as floyd came out with that get-up on, my mouth dropped open. the individuals around me started laughing and saying "oooohh!! he's clownin!!" i think that was cold of floyd to do, especially on cinco de mayo regardless if he has mexican heritage or not. floyd knows what it looked like and so does everyone else. his intent was wrong. you really have to be careful of that stuff.
the fight was wack!
Just to clear up the whole mexican heritage thing. I was reminded by a friend that Floyd's uncle, Roger, used to do (or once did) a similar getup when he came to the ring for a fight. So they called Roger the "Mexican Assasin". I think that was misinterpreted by someone to mean that his uncle Roger was Mexican. But anyone who follows Floyd knows his uncle is about as niggorant as any person you have ever met.
I enjoyed the fight and I definitely didn't let Floyd's dumbazz mock/taunt/stunt ruin it for me.
"Don't ask me why I insist on continuing to post embarrassing pictures of myself."
~True...but so funny. I Love it!
Ok - Floyd is ignant...lol - I'm sorry. I just have to keep it real...
I watched his HBO special with De La Hoya and he was truly incredible...they were all so ghetto...
His father was also a hott azz mess! LOL Did you hear the things he was saying???
BTW - I thought what he did was unbelievable...
The party at TAO - was off the hook...I saw the pic's over at YBF.com and them dudes (Jigga & DIDDY) was throwing cash ($100) all over the place...I would have only wanted to be there to grab the cash...that's it. LOL
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