Floyd Mayweather gives ignorant, vile response to question about #MeToo movement
Floyd Mayweather is famous because he is a world-class athlete. He happens to be very good at punching other people, and avoiding their punches.
On the other hand, he’s infamous for being a pretty disgusting human being. He has an extensive history of domestic violence. He’s misogynistic. He’s racist. He’s homophobic.
The worst part is that his fame protects him from the repercussions that his various transgressions deserve. So much so that he apparently doesn’t care about being offensive.
The latest example came in an interview with Men’s Health. Mayweather wasn’t even really asked a question about the #MeToo movement – the wave of women speaking out about and denouncing sexual assault. It was simply part of a question that the interviewer never even got to. Because Mayweather cut her off.
Here’s the exchange, with video below:
We’re asking a lot of men, in light of the #MeToo movement, how men can grow in 2018.
Mayweather: The who?
The #MeToo movement. Women speaking out about sexual assault.
Mayweather: When you say “me too” … When somebody is like, “I got a Rolls Royce, I be like ‘me too.'” When somebody say they got a private jet, I say, “Me too. I got two. Me too.”
This is a very different —
Mayweather: Well, I didn’t know! My Me Too movement from the beginning was whenever somebody said what they have I’m like, “me too.” Somebody say they got a billion dollars, I say, “I made a billion dollars, me too.”
It is not possible to be more ignorant or insensitive.
It was easy, and almost necessary, for viewers to laugh in the moment. The interviewer likely felt she had to laugh, too. That doesn’t detract from how obnoxious and reprehensible the response was, though.
The reporter’s prompting finally got Mayweather to say, somewhat uncomfortably, that “sexual harassment, I don’t think it’s cool at all.” It took a lot of stumbling over his answer to even get those words out.
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