Floyd invited us to ?spend a day? in his world, via Instagram. How could anyone resist? One minute you?re cleaning up cat shit from the litter tray, the next you?re wondering what it would be like if the pooper scooper was encrusted in diamonds. Sometimes, when I?m waiting for the central heating to come on and trying to get tonight?s dinner to defrost before the child gets home from school, I dream about getting a full set of Versace leisure suits. Pale powder blue, if you?re asking. But my Lord is a cruel and vengeful God. He keeps me in poverty. For kicks, I think. Meanwhile, people like Floyd Mayweather and that odious cretin who buys up pharmaceutical licenses for cancer medication and then hikes up the prices two thousand percent, get to live like mediaeval kings. Don?t they?
Floyd?s pictures were the usual: Rolls Royce, basketball seats, close-ups of a Patek Philippe watch, yadda yadda. One image, however, stood out. Almost like he couldn?t help it, and despite the clearly orchestrated PR of the whole thing, he needed to be photographed eating a meal on his plane. ?First class section,? too? There he was, grinning from his leather seat, his cheeks looked fuller, like they were cheeks on a nineteenth century Indian Mogul at feasting season, but let?s not get personal. I expected to focus my tired eyes into the picture and see caviar and champagne, but Floyd?s meal consisted of what looked like a microwaved ready meal. He was holding it tenderly, like a kitten. That grin. That plastic spork? Bon appetite.
Enough, though, of a downwardly mobile man like me whipping on a multi-millionaire sportsman. So what if he travels around the world doing carefully choreographed coincidental favors to anyone who needed to, say, wash their green laundry out of sight of a major financial institution. He can do what I can?t: he can fight and he can garner enough money from it to send hired thugs to all of our houses and pour cement into our shoes as we sleep. If he wishes. When the capacity to be self-aware finally hits home in the Mayweather household, it?ll come hard and fast. I hope. Like a Rolls Royce Phantom falling from a penthouse balcony.
And nowadays Mayweather has tentacles everywhere in the boxing world. You have to give him credit. He?s even, by proxy, involved in the latest slow-burner grudge-fest bout in the UK: DeGale vs. Eubank.
Chris Eubank Jr. fights James DeGale at the end of February. This week, Eubank admitted to having ?trained myself all these years,? amongst the usual ?I?ll retire DeGale?? blah blah blah. His father is an on/off Sheriff at the moment in some town in the USA. Chris Sr. wears a bow tie in his patrol car. I don?t know why. He?s what people around here call ?A twat.? My sister used to complain about Eubank Sr. driving his massive American truck up and down her street in Chelsea in the 1990?s. The noise sent her into rages. Imagine not being able to get your baby to sleep and then finding out that the cause is Chris Eubank wearing a monocle, driving a fifty million horsepower road train through rush hour London traffic. Horrible scenes.
Eubank Jr. has brought in Nate Vasquez as his trainer for this fight. Vasquez works out of Mayweather?s Las Vegas gym but has thrown in his lot with Eubank for a couple of months. According to a source, Vasquez has ?been living in Chris?s eco-mansion in Brighton and watching him run up and down the beach in the fucking freezing cold.?
For the record, DeGale and Eubank should provide an entertaining fight for us. Eubank is the archetypal bad guy; stooge and pantomime villain rolled into one. He is perceived as someone who can?t ever seem to crawl out from underneath his father?s enormous ego despite his relatively enjoyable boxing talent and his guts (see Eubank vs. Saunders for proof of his metal). DeGale never really managed to be a consistent enough performer to set the PPV market on fire, but he is supremely skilled enough to give anyone at super-middleweight a hard time. We will be entertained for sure when fight night comes around.
Neither man will make enough money that evening to buy a private jet. Like it matters.
