Ricardo Mayorga has long been a controversial figure in boxing. The Nicaraguan brawler has always painted himself as the villain, doing things to rile up his opponents and generally not giving a damn. He's now 41 years old and in the midst of winding his career down, but he can still grab attention when he wants to. Shane Mosley can attest to that.
The two men are scheduled to rematch their 2008 fight this weekend, with Mosley doing the promoting. Unsurprisingly, it's already a bit of a circus. While Mosley is apparently out in space saying that he expects 1.4 million pay per view buys (he may have just misspoken and meant dollars, not number of buys), and Don King was unable to prevent the fight from happening, the most amusing/embarrassing thing to happen yet was at the hand of Mayorga. Literally.
During a promotional event for the fight, Mosley's girlfriend bent over to pick something up. So Mayorga slapped her on the butt. Obviously Mosley didn't take too kindly to this and pandemonium ensued. Mosley tried to attack Mayorga, she threw her shoe at him, and the whole thing was broken up.
After the rumble, the video shows Mosley and his girlfriend being interviewed. She offers Mayorga $10,000 to put his hands behind his back so she can punch him "for like, five minutes". Mayorga's response? He'll give her $25,000 to slap her on the ass again. Yeah.
Was it a publicity stunt? Probably, but who knows. Shane and his girlfriend certainly didn't seem too happy about the whole thing though.
This is all reminiscent of Mayorga's build-up to his ill-fated MMA debut in 2010 against Din Thomas. Mayorga karate-chopped Thomas in the throat in a face-off, which set everyone off. King ended up getting an injunction to stop that fight due to his business relationship with Mayorga (the same thing he tried this time, but it didn't work). Mayorga eventually debuted in MMA in 2013 in Nicaragua, and even that was controversial, with the boxer kneeing his opponent in the spine so hard he couldn't come out for the third round. Oh, he was also 20 pounds over the lightweight limit for the contest too.
So who's ordering the pay-per-view this weekend?
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