Floyd Mayweather Jr. may not have much to say about a possible fight with fellow superstar boxer Manny Pacquaio, but that’s not stopping his father from speaking his mind.
Mayweather Sr. blasted Pacquiao in an On the Ropes Radio interview on July 19, found on blogtalkradio.com, calling him everything from a “Filipino midget” to a “faggot.”
“I’d tell him he’s a faggot,” Floyd Sr. said, when asked what he would say to Pacquiao face to face, if given the chance. “That’s what I’d tell him. I’d tell him he ain’t nothing but a little sissy; a little girl.”
Mayweather insists that Pacquiao is the one that’s afraid to fight his son, and Pacquiao’s camp is trying to make it seem like it’s the other way around.
“The only thing they’re trying to do is to switch this around and make it look like it’s my son that’s scared,” Mayweather Sr. continued. “He ain’t the one that’s scared. I know who’s scared for real.”
The former welterweight contender and championship winning trainer also spoke on the deadline set by one of Pacquiao’s promoters, Bob Arum.
“My problem is, Bob Arum don’t call no shots,” he said. “The fight can be made anytime they want the fight to be made. ‘Little Floyd’ definitely ain’t scared of no Pacquiao. That’s the last thing in the world that little Floyd is scared of—a little Filipino midget. Definitely that’s not the case.”
Floyd Sr. suggested that the deadline was a tactic used to make his son out to be the villain of the potential Mayweather-Pacquiao matchup.
“He’s trying to make little Floyd look bad but people already know what time of day it is,” he said. “Of course, is trying to make Little Floyd look bad because he’s with Pacquiao. When he was with my son (as his promoter) he was trying to make him look good and everybody else bad.”
Mayweather and Pacquiao initially attempted negotiations for a fight back in March, but both fighters took on other opponents after failing to reach agreement on a drug testing. According to Arum, they re-opened negotiations for a fight in November, but Mayweather told reporters Sunday that he’s not rushing into a fight. Arum told the media Pacquiao will now take on either Mexican star Antonio Margarito or do a rematch with Migel Cotto, a Puerto Rican boxer who lost the WBO welterweight title to Pacquaio in 2009. Floyd Sr. says fighting Cotto again—who is also promoted by Arum and recently moved up in weight to win the WBA light middle weight title—is a joke.
“Why is he going to fight Cotto again? All this is, is just a game,” the 57-year-old Bronx native said. “If you see what the whole thing is, Bob Arum is giving Cotto a title and then turning around and letting Pacman beat Cotto up again and take it again. That’s all it is…It’s so plain to see a blind man can see that.”
Mayweather Sr. said it’s still possible that his son will fight Pacquiao, but he doesn’t believe the fight will happen in 2010. And when it does go down, he thinks Floyd Jr. should be paid more than Pacquiao.
“He knows he ain’t the best fighter and Bob Arum knows he ain’t the best fighter, too. So why should you belittle yourself and take less money than you’re supposed to?” Floyd Sr said.
When asked if he thinks pro boxing will take a hit if the fight doesn’t happen, he said “the sport is going bad anyway.”
“The game is going bad because nobody is trying to clean the game up. They just want my son to fight somebody that got some drugs in him, then say he not trying to fight,” he added. “He better not be trying to fight somebody on drugs because then you putting your life on the line…Drug testing shouldn’t be 14 days out…drug testing should be random.”
