Floyd To UFC: A Master Stroke
Published by Staff on June 9th, 2008 in Current Events

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By Charles Jay
FLOYD TO UFC: WOULD IT BE A MASTER STROKE?

I heard two things that I don’t necessarily believe this past week. One of them was that Floyd Mayweather was retiring from professional boxing. The other is that he is getting set to sign, this week, with the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC).

The boxing part of this thing is easy to be skeptical about. Mayweather had announced that he was retiring after fighting Ricky Hatton late last year. Yet he made plans to fight a rematch with Oscar De La Hoya, which was supposed to take place in September. It is said within the boxing industry that fighters often retire - until their next fight.

There’s a ring of truth to that. Fighters are constantly retiring, only to return when the offer is good enough or the opportunity is tempting. We wouldn’t have enough room here to list all the world champions who have announced they were quitting, only to come back - whether it’s a month, a year, or in the case of George Foreman, ten years later.

If you were really a non-believer, you might think this was something of a negotiating ploy on Mayweather’s part, in order to get a better deal out of De La Hoya’s company, Golden Boy Promotions, for that rematch, which might sense considering he is the champion while De La Hoya is the better draw. That kind of conflict will often make a meeting of the minds difficult.

But then again, this might be something of a revenge play on Mayweather’s part. I could believe the suggestion put forward by George Willis of the New York Post, among others, that this may be Floyd Jr.’s way of fouling up the biggest payday ever for his father Floyd Sr., who happens to be De La Hoya’s trainer. The relationship between father and son is that acrimonious, and that bizarre. If you remember, Floyd Mayweather Sr., sat out the first fight between the two, not because there was a conflict of interest, but because he wasn’t able to come to terms with De La Hoya on a fee. He then went to his son’s camp, only to be rejected and subsequently leave. He watched as Freddie Roach trained De La Hoya. Then, pressed during an interview at ringside, he implied that Oscar in fact deserved to win the decision.

So I can believe this, with certain qualifications. I wonder whether Mayweather might fight again, only to avoid the De La Hoya rematch, or insist as a condition of the deal getting done, that his father could not train De La Hoya. he did lay that kind of condition on his uncle and trainer, Roger Mayweather, who was the trainer for Steve Forbes but had to step away because Floyd Jr. didn’t want him contributing to anything that might screw up the rematch.

If that fight never takes place, how did you think Roger’s going to feel?

More importantly, how confused are you this point?

Well, maybe Dana White is going to clear up the confusion for you. Another rumor floating around is that Mayweather is going to sign a huge deal with the UFC that would include several fights. White had told ESPN last week, “I’m going to make an announcement next week that is going to blow people’s minds. That deal is done, but my employees don’t even know yet…….It’s an indicator of where this business is going over the next five years.”

Admittedly, there is no concrete rationale to the Mayweather story, and a wrestling website is one of only a couple of places I know that has really even talked about it. Another site, MediaTakeOut.com, has reported that the deal would be worth about $200 million, which would include, in their words, “equity in the UFC.” That’s something I find a little hard to believe; first of all, Mayweather isn’t likely to generate that kind of money for the organization; secondly, they would have to protect him quite a bit to get him to the point where he could bring big paydays, and thirdly, I don’t think these guys are in the habit of giving out equity in their company, unlike De La Hoya with his.

But that’s not to say I would discount Mayweather doing some kind of deal with the UFC. There was one internet writer who suggested that a Mayweather signing could coincide with the announcement of new weight divisions, whether they be “junior” divisions as in boxing, or lighter divisions, in order to accommodate people like Mayweather, who has fought at 154 but is much more comfortable at 147, and the WEC’s Uriah Faber. Those lighter weights exist in the WEC, which is controlled by the UFC, so it wouldn’t be that earth-shattering a move.

Of course, bringing in Mayweather may shake the earth just a little.

Imagine if the UFC demonstrates that it has gotten Mayweather to retire from boxing because of a bigger offer from mixed martial arts. In terms of the positioning battle against boxing, that’s a huge victory. What it would do, because Mayweather is known far and wide as the best pound-for-pound boxer in the world, is have the residual effect of literally forcing boxing writers and other “mainstream” media to take the UFC and the whole sport of mixed martial arts more seriously, which would do for it what a hundred Kimbo Slice fights on CBS could never do.

Come to think of it, for people truly thinking about long-term strategy, maybe that kind of leverage WOULD be worth $200 million.