Midnight Mania! Mayweather says he has to go after McGregor, “this is for all the blacks around the world”

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Floyd Mayweather says he’s can’t run from McGregor the way he does to other opponents, partly because the fans who were disappointed with the Pacquiao fight deserve some entertainment. He also mentioned the racist comments he thinks McGregor made.

“This can’t be a defensive fight… I have to go to him.”

Mayweather thinks McGregor referred to black people as monkeys, and that comment angered him. Transcript via MMAFighting.com:

“I just didn’t like when he called us monkeys,” Mayweather said. “I think that was totally disrespect. … He called us monkeys. I didn’t like it. It didn’t push a button to make me jump out of my character and go crazy, but I didn’t like it.”

The video he is referring to is when McGregor was asked about Rocky III, and responded that it was the movie with the “dancing monkeys in the gym.” It is not clear whether McGregor was referring to the all-black gym he trained at after his initial loss to Clubber Lang, or, also plausibly, the media circus in his own gym before that first fight. a scene his trainer called a zoo. That, in fact, seems more likely, because he mentioned the celebrity gym explicitly.

McGregor did, of course, refer to Mayweather as “boy” twice on the media tour, a term used to degrade black men, notably during the Jim Crowe era in the US. He’s referred to past opponents as “boy” as well, but when he attempted to address “the race thing” he came across extremely tone-deaf, a moment he later admitted “didn’t really hit right”.

Mayweather mentioned that the comment made him think of the heroes who fought for black people’s civil rights. He believes he will be representing that tradition August 26.

“I just thought about all our different leaders,” Mayweather said on ESPN. “Martin Luther King, Malcolm X. They went on the front line for me and my family and all my loved ones. Like I said before, this stuff still goes on. But I’m strong, I’m smart, patient. And come Aug. 26, I’ll be the same person — smart, strong, patient. And the same way he called us monkeys, we’re gonna see if he say that Aug. 26.”

Asked if that would be weighing on his mind the night of the fight, Mayweather said it wouldn’t but nonetheless, it is important to him.

“No different,” Mayweather said. “But this is for a cause. This is for the American people. This is for all the blacks around the world.”

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