On Sunday, June 6th Miami, Florida will host the exhibition fight between future hall of famer Floyd Mayweather and popular youtuber Logan Paul. It’s a highly controversial fight amongst boxing fans, critics, and fighters who claim that it makes a mockery of boxing and insults the actual fighters who devote their lives to the sport.
It’s relatively new territory for the sport to see untrained, non-professionals face real boxers on a large stage. We’ve already seen Logan Paul and his brother in the ring against fellow youtubers and non-boxers. But we were perhaps a bit more unprepared to anticipate a mismatch of this level in Mayweather vs. Paul. For a lot of the boxing world, this is a fight for the most casual of the casuals and more specifically the large following of the internet celebrity. It’s not a legitimate fight in a traditional sense and the weight it carries consists more of money and business, rather than the legitimacy of a fight fought between two professionals. However, what these types of fights bring is worldwide attention and money. From a business perspective, this type of attraction that internet celebrities bring to the sport is something to maximize and not leave untapped.
For Floyd Mayweather, this is an unsurprising move that speaks to his business first mentality. He is known to tailor his decisions in the sport to where they prioritize the money-making opportunities. And his decision to fight Logan Paul is just the latest example of that. While some fighters look at this as a disgrace to the sport, Floyd saw it as another opportunity to make money and evade unnecessary punishment. The risk of this fight is minimal, if not non-existent, and the million-dollar payday for Floyd is more than enough of an incentive to entertain this type of fight.
The pay-per-view fight will be shown on Showtime and will also highlight the debut of one of Mayweather Promotions’ new fighters Jalil Hackett. The undercard includes Jarret Hurd vs. Luis Arias and Chad Johnson vs. Brain Maxwell.
