By: Sean Crose
It’s been almost ten whole years since they fought. Yet Floyd Mayweather, who handily bested Canelo Alvarez when the two men met in a 2013 mega fight, has taken the time out to defend his former foe against a statement made by rising star Ryan Garcia. Garcia, who has worked with Canelo, publicly stated he thinks Canelo will lose to Gennady Golovkin when they meet in the fall. “You see,” Mayweather says in a FightHype video “Ryan Garcia, first he’s praising Canelo. Right? He wanna learn from Canelo. You’re in Canelo’s training camp. Now it’s all hate. Oh I don’t like him. I don’t like this. I don’t like him.”
Mayweather then goes and takes matters a step further. “Accomplish what Canelo has accomplished,” he says, “then speak bad about him. You know what I mean? But you don’t need to speak bad about him anyway because we all need to stay in our own lane and do us. So you really shouldn’t speak bad about him if you went to his camp to learn from him and to be his student. One thing about Canelo, he’s gonna step up to the plate and do what he gotta do. He’s gonna fight.”
Mayweather goes on to argue that he’s willing to give his old competition its due. “I can’t knock the motherfucker because he’s going down in the Hall of Fame,” he says of Canelo. “So that’s another guy, you know? Pacquiao is going down in the Hall of the Fame. These are the guys that I went up against. I will always give guys their flowers. I’m not a hater, man.”
As for rumors that he isn’t a good sport, Mayweather addresses that matter as well. “They want to keep telling you ‘Oh Floyd is jealous, he’s this, he’s that,'” the former pound for pound great claims. “I’m not jealous. If I was jealous of fighters I wouldn’t push them to be great. Remember this. When you have seen beef on social media, I have always been the reaction, not the action. Always. I’ve always uplifted my people and I will always uplift my people.”