Pacquiao Nemesis, Mayweather, Backs Gay Marriage; Previously Used Anti-Gay Slur

Floyd Mayweather once called a talk radio host a “faggot.” He mocked a fellow boxer Miguel Cotto, for sharing a bed–while training for a fight–with his male trainer, whom Cotto, who is married to a female, considers a brother. Mayweather’s past words and actions are more vicious and insidious than anything Manny Pacquiao has said about gays, but all that will be swept under the rug now that Mayweather, in an overt attempt to gain publicity at the expense of his nemesis, has tweeted his support of gay marriage.  

Boxing fans all over the world are waiting for Pacquiao and Mayweather to fight in the ring. And while nobody knows if the two best boxers in the world will ever agree to fight, they have continued to trade verbal jabs outside the ring. 

And it continued again on Wednesday when, after Pacquiao was banned from a Los Angeles shopping center for his stance against same-sex marriage and gay rights groups called for Nike to drop him for words he never uttered, Mayweather (@FloydMayweather) took to his twitter account to tweet, “I stand behind President Obama & support gay marriage. I’m an American citizen & I believe people should live their life the way they want.”

But it seems like Mayweather’s apparent evolution on the issue of gay marriage was, just like President Obama’s, political–especially as Mayweather has used a gay slur and mocked gays in the past, for publicity’s sake.  

In November of 2011, Mayweather called into a show on Sirius, hosted by the disc jockey Rude Jude, and called Rude Jude a “faggot” after a heated confrontation in which he was accused of being “insecure” and afraid to fight Pacquaio. 

And on episode 4 of HBO’s “24/7” that aired this month, Mayweather, while filmed under his covers in his bed, looks into the camera and says he is “not gonna show you who is under here” and then, with a smirk, says, “it’s not a guy,” which is a reference to a scene in the second episode of the series when his opponent, Cotto, was shown sleeping in the same bed as his male trainer while training for his bout with Mayweather. 

Yet these inconvenient details probably will not matter to people like Rick Caruso, who banned Pacquaio from his Los Angeles shopping complex, the mainstream media, or other militant gay rights groups and campaigns, such as the “It Gets Better Project” associated with bully Dan Savage.