By Norm Frauenheim
Floyd Mayweather Jr. must love all the attention he’s getting this week. He’s retired – or so he says – and yet he’s still generating the kind of controversy that would inevitably erupt during the week before one of his fights. Oscar De La Hoya and Adrien Broner have gone Ronda Rousey on him.
It’s hard to figure, other than to say it’s just another chapter in social media’s voracious need for content. Say what you want about Mayweather, but he is TBE at using and maintaining his prominence in social-media.
His mastery of all the digital platforms propelled him to the GDP-like purse he collected for the pay-per-view blockbuster in a victory over Manny Pacquiao that will be remembered more for the number of tweets than the number of punches.
Broner’s profane rant on YouTube isn’t exactly a surprise. It’s also a redundancy to use profane and rant next to Broner’s name. Sorry for that. Still, it’s almost comical to see Broner — angry at Mayweather’s criticism of his October victory over Khabib Allakhverdiev — go off on his ex-hero. Broner did everything but flush TMT T-shirts and TBE caps down the same toilet that was a receptacle for some of his cash a few years ago. Maybe, that’s the sequel.
The surprise was De La Hoya’s letter in the latest issue of Playboy. It was honest. It was forthright. It was funny. De La Hoya summed up what so many are thinking: The business is better off without Mayweather. But why now? Why publish the dismissive farewell to Mayweather at the very time De La Hoya is promoting a Canelo Alvarez-Miguel Cotto on Nov. 21 at Las Vegas’ Mandalay Bay.
De La Hoya has a fight that has the potential to say a lot more to Mayweather than any letter in Playboy could ever say. It’s a real chance for the business to get beyond the deflating hangover that still lingers from the public dismay over Mayweather-Pacquiao. Perhaps, the timing is just a result of the magazine’s publishing schedule. Deadlines can do things that writers don’t intend. It would have bee nice if De La Hoya had simply written: Mayweather? Who’s he? But that would not have been enough for Playboy, which is seeking a different kind of content these days. The magazine announced it wouldn’t publish nude photos anymore. About 10 days before Canelo-Cotto, however, I’d prefer a centerfold to De La Hoya’s letter.
Once the headlines subside, perhaps the business will be better for De La Hoya’s rhetorical swipe at his old rival. And, maybe, this is the opening salvo in a promotional rivalry that could evolve into the modern version of Bob Arum-versus-Don King. Arum-King was as entertaining and intense as anything that happened within the ring. It helped fuel the 1980s, one of the game’s best eras.
For now, however, I can only think that Mayweather has won another one. Inside and outside the ropes, he has always been able to dictate pace, style and timing. He’s doing it again. We’re talking about him when we should be talking about Canelo-Cotto.
