After Rant Against Pacquiao, Mayweather Is in a Class of His Own: He Has None

It's too bad that no one runs boxing, for if someone did, Floyd Mayweather would be made to pay for the video he released on Friday that went as viral on the Internet as it was a vile affront to human dignity.

He'd be suspended from the game, like baseball did pitcher John Rocker after his infamous ruminations about people of color, or radio did Don Imus after his jokes about black female basketball players.

Mayweather would be ordered to take some sort of sensitivity class before being allowed to return.

He'd be told to apologize to the game, or find some other line of work more comfortable with having someone as verbally malicious as him, offending an entire race and spitting out sexual slurs with the rapidity of his jab.

Instead, Mayweather's advisor, Leonard Ellerbee, and Manny Pacquiao's promoter, Bob Arum, will continue to try to make a ring date for their guys. Las Vegas hotels, as well as one in Dubai, will continue to try to lure the pair. And pay-per-view TV will not stop at the chance of pulling in $60, $70 per household for selling to us, the public, what many have said would be the most lucrative fight in history.

Is it not time for those of us offended by Mayweather's words to stop ponying up for his fights until he shows a little more respect for his fellow man? Maybe that will make him think a little harder about his actions the next time he has an overdue IRS bill to pay.

Mayweather's racist and homophobic rant will be dismissed as nothing new in boxing. Mike Tyson's psychotic outbursts will be recalled. Someone will point out how Muhammad Ali verbally assaulted Joe Frazier.

Those incidents were wrong, and so was what Mayweather spat out. Neither Tyson nor Ali should've been allowed to get away with what they did. Boxing and boxers should've learned from that, but there is never anyone around to teach them that lesson.

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Boxing can't stop itself because there is no one within the game, if there ever was anyway, with a moral compass to do so. Antonio Margarito lost his license to fight after getting caught about to fight Shane Mosely with his fists wrapped with Plaster of Paris, but a Texas boxing commission looked the other way and gave Margarito a license to pick up his career in its state against Pacquiao in November. And Cowboys owner Jerry Jones couldn't say "no" to filling up his new billion-dollar football arena with another event.

I hoped Pacquiao, an elected lawmaker in his native Philippines, would turn down such a deal, but even he couldn't muster what little it would take to do the right thing for the standing of his sport. Maybe the vicious swipes Mayweather unleashed Friday against Asians will lead Pacquiao away from Mayweather for good, ending Mayweather's career in earnest right now.

That would be the honorable thing for Pacquiao to do. It would also be a smart thing for boxing.

Time was when boxing needed Mayweather because he is its finest practitioner over the last decade or so. He thrust himself into the psyche of sports fans at the Olympics. He thrilled as a pro early on with his speed and ability to strike sharply without himself getting touched. He has a little Sugar Ray Leonard in him. A bit of Ali. And on top of that, he was so good that no one could beat him. They still haven't.

But he hemmed and hawed about fighting Pacquiao the past year or so, just about deflating what was ballooning anticipation around the sport for the Mayweather-Pacquiao fight to happen. Friday, Mayweather appeared to bury his sport under an unnecessary avalanche of hateful invective.

His tirade was the disgusting kind of thing some of us have underscored to dismiss mixed martial arts athletes and promoters who've employed racial and homophobic attacks on opponents and even media that have questioned them.

Is it not time for those of us offended by Mayweather's words to stop ponying up for his fights until he shows a little more respect for his fellow man? Maybe that will make him think a little harder about his actions the next time he has an overdue IRS bill to pay. Mayweather sounded like a target of Bob Arum's attack on MMA some month's ago, when he dismissed MMA as being a sport for racial hate groups.

And to think, Mayweather earlier this year compared himself to Sugar Ray Robinson and Ali, two boxers considered the greatest ever to step into the ring.

"I got respect for Sugar Ray Robinson; I got respect for Muhammad Ali," Mayweather told the media during a teleconference in April previewing his May 1 fight against Mosley at the MGM Garden Arena. "I'm a man just like them and put on my pants just like they put on their pants. But what makes them any better than me?"

For starters, Robinson and Ali added to their prowess in the ring with a grace outside of it. And Ali, of course, stood for something greater than himself. Had he owned a twitter account I doubt he would have employed his as Mayweather has in recent days, trying to figure which of his six-figure cars to drive and how much bling to wear leaving his crib. Mayweather is as self-absorbed as any athlete today.

More important, however, Robinson – and Ali to a lesser degree – didn't consciously do anything to detract fans, old or new, from their sport. They sought the best match-ups in the ring. They ducked nobody. They didn't go out of their way to degrade entire peoples or lands with derogatory shots.

Robinson and Ali were good for the fight game. They were inviting athletes to the brutal sport. There is a museum in Ali's hometown of Louisville to commemorate less what he did inside the ring for himself than what he did outside of it for everyone else, especially those who were different than him and less fortunate.

That isn't a road down which Mayweather is headed. Instead, his is the one named Ruin, and he's dragging boxing with him.