This will shock some misguided people who consider me a Floyd Mayweather Jr. hater or a Manny Pacquiao syncophant. But, in my less than humble opinion, Las Vegas Justice of the Peace, the Honorable Melissa Saragosa of Department 4, did the right and proper thing by delaying Mayweather’s jail stint from Jan. 6 to June 1. Some other misguided folks quickly took to the web on Friday, seconds after JP Saragosa’s granting of the request from the lawyers for “Money,” to brand this as a shame, an abomination and worse. What was said or implied was, as one wag put it, “Money talks and Money walks in Las Vegas…” In other words, favoritism was shown to the wealthy fighter who normally resides in his “Big Boy Mansion.” I don’t see this in any way, shape or form. What Saragosa did was not so much a victory for Mayweather as it was for working class folks–the taxi drivers, the bartenders in the old Betty Boop Bar at the front of the MGM Grand and the nice people who toil in Mexican restaurant Diego’s inside the massive hotel casino. It’s been no secret how badly Vegas was hit by our national economic recession which hit in 2008. Many neighborhoods across the Vegas Valley are riddled with empty homes, houses abandoned or taken away from people who couldn’t keep up with their mortgages.
