Floyd Mayweather Leaves Jail Friday, Could Be Part Of 50 Cent's Plan To Make Boxing More Like The UFC

Floyd Mayweather's time in jail for a domestic violence charge will come to an end on Friday as he'll be released early. As pointed out by Bad Left Hook's Scott Christ, Floyd getting out of jail early isn't really a huge story. He's serving time for a misdemeanor charge and will have served almost two-thirds of his sentence. So it's not like there's a horrendous failure of the justice system because Floyd is a celebrity or anything.

The timing of his release also happens to line-up well with Mayweather running buddy, 50 Cent's assault on the boxing world with the establishment of TMT Promotions.

50 has signed some very big names, turning an upstart boxing promotion into a legitimate player in only two weeks time, inking deals with Andre Berto, Zab Judah, Celestino Caballero, Andre Dirrell, Yuriorkis Gamboa, and Billy Dib. That's a lot of "name" fighters that have major network interest. Given boxing's place as a TV package sport, that's a very good start.

Given Mayweather's relationship with 50 and the name of the promotion (TMT = The Money Team), it isn't much of a stretch to assume that Floyd will be the crown jewel of TMT Promotions. Mayweather Promotions was never an actual promoter and Floyd never really had a long-term deal with Golden Boy so there's nothing really stopping him from getting out of the De La Hoya business.

50 has been outspoken about his plans to be a real player in boxing and he's looking at the UFC as a blueprint for some of their promotional efforts (via Herald Sun):

"We're going to change the demographic also, appeal to the younger demographic.

"You look at UFC and MMA, when their festivities start the place is full, whereas the tradition in boxing is you wait until the main event starts.

"We want to put on cards where there are five main event fights, where there is entertainment from start to finish, cards that command attention all over the world."

There have been some decent efforts to improve the overall card quality of boxing shows, Showtime has been great about putting on 4-5 fight cards with Golden Boy and there has been some good quality action coming out of that focus on treating the undercard as valuable. We saw Shane Mosley versus Canelo Alvarez on the undercard of Mayweather's bout with Miguel Cotto. We also saw a great PPV action card for Cotto versus Antonio Margarito. But, overall, boxing undercards are far from a focal point in the game.

Regardless of if 50 is able to really change the overall dynamic of the boxing game or not, it's ignorant at this point to suggest that TMT Promotions isn't shaping up to be a real force, as pointed out by Scott Christ:

If Mayweather does wind up going with TMT, likely as a partner of some sort and the star attraction for the new company, it will be a big shift in the major boxing landscape in the United States. Currently, Top Rank and Golden Boy pretty much own the market, but Mayweather would instantly legitimize the upstart, just as De La Hoya did when he started GBP over a decade ago.

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We know now that that model can work and make big money. Mayweather could be the next fighter to do it. Like Oscar was at the time, Floyd is the biggest star in the sport right now in many ways, and he also has a young generation of fighters that hold him up on a major pedestal and look up to him. That's what I'm looking forward to finding out now that Floyd will be available to comment: Is TMT going to be an instant major league player? If Floyd's in, then the answer is yes.

There is a lot to this story and Floyd's early release from jail is going to be a big part of it.