LAS VEGAS — An excursion to the Grant Sawyer Building for a Nevada Athletic Commission meeting is always a good source of entertainment.
The Sawyer Building is home to many government offices. It is a stone’s throw from Fremont Street, which is another kind of entertainment entirely. The Sawyer Building, across from Cashman Field, is located in what us Vegas locals refer to as “not the best part of town.” To be fair, “not the best part of town” includes just about anything within five miles of the Las Vegas strip.
Commission meetings are often an exercise in drudgery, but from time to time, they are a wild source of hilarity. Most of the time, this happens when Floyd Mayweather is involved in a hearing of some sort.
Tuesday morning, Mayweather appeared in front of the commission to discuss an episode of Showtime’s All Access reality show in which two members of Mayweather’s gym allegedly fought for 31 minutes in a row while other members of The Money Team wagered on the outcome and one of Mayweather’s girlfriends smoked pot.
As it turned out, almost all of All Access was fake. That’s according to Mayweather, who noted the show was just for entertainment. The marijuana? It was prop marijuana. The 31-minute round of boxing? There were actually five or six breaks. Reality, as most of us know by now, is not reality at all. Mayweather even revealed he has full editorial control over the contents of the show.
And then, as they are wont to do, the commission members thanked Mayweather for agreeing to appear in front of them. He took time out of his busy schedule when he didn’t have to, Commissioner Pat Lundvall said. Commissioner Bill Brady, vying for a role as the grandfatherly member of The Money Team, spoke glowingly of the Mayweather gym and just how gosh-darn professional they are over there.
Never mind that Mayweather was called in front of the commission by subpoena because of highly unprofessional things that were taking place in his gym. You can’t piss off the cash cow, and Mayweather is Nevada’s cash cow.
Jon Jones and Daniel Cormier are not Nevada’s cash cows, however, and so their respective appearances in front of the panel took a different, harsher tone. One can imagine what kind of party Mayweather would’ve been invited to by commission members if only he’d had the temerity to involve himself in a press conference brawl at the MGM Grand.
Nevada deputy attorney general Chris Eccles—one half of the Eccles-Kizer tag team that tried (and failed) to banish Chael Sonnen from the state for life—entered a video of the Jones-Cormier brawl into evidence.
Jones was apologetic, as he has been from the start. Whether this was real groveling or a carefully orchestrated plea to get his punishment reduced, we’ll never know. Whatever the intention, it mostly worked; Jones received a $50,000 fine and has to complete 40 hours of community service in Las Vegas.
The community service portion in a different city is the worst part of a sentence for a man who is about to enter into training camp for the toughest fight of his life. The money? It’s $50,000, but that isn’t much for Jones. He’s a millionaire at this point, and though it’s no drop in the bucket, things could have been so much worse. $50,000 is 10 percent of Jones’ guaranteed purse for the Cormier fight.
Cormier was also fined 10 percent of his purse, a number that comes out to $9,000. He was given 20 hours of community service. But unlike Jones, he’s able to complete his community service in San Jose. The commission decided that most of the blame for the brawl fell squarely on Jones’ shoulders, so it punished him accordingly.
Did it get it right? I think so. Cormier pushed Jones back, but Jones was the man who threw the punch and essentially started the melee. Both men acted in the heat of the moment, but it was Jones who escalated things by throwing the punch. That is the moment when things went from a heated situation to something embarrassing for the sport and for the Ultimate Fighting Championship.
Commissioner Francisco Aguilar fretted that the brawl would help sell tickets for the event. At the end of the day, he must take this public stance. But his commission’s actions with Mayweather—the constant praise and fawning—makes any kind of public shaming of the Cormier-Jones brawl ludicrous.
Because Nevada and its commission is entirely capable of overlooking these things—as they proved just minutes earlier with Mayweather—so long as they aren’t affecting a presence that can draw in millions of dollars in revenue.
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