Written by Brian Campbell at CBS Sports.com
For all of the fun Floyd Mayweather and UFC champion Conor McGregor have had slinging insults at each other throughout their international tour, the overall tone seemed to turn negative on Thursday.
The two biggest stars in combat sports will meet in a pay-per-view boxing match on Aug. 26 in Las Vegas. And with the third leg of a four-day, three-country media tour complete following a shamefully crass performance from both at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn, much of the talk centered upon McGregor’s racially insensitive words.
McGregor (21-3 in MMA), a native of Ireland, was criticized for twice hurling the derogatory term “Dance for me, boy” at Mayweather during each of the first two stops on the tour this week. The controversy continued Wednesday when McGregor, during an interview which aired on “Jimmy Kimmel Live,”made an inappropriate remark about a group of African-American fighters during a reference to the movie “Rocky III.”
“Rocky III? I’m trying to remember which one was Rocky III,” McGregor said. “Was that the one in the celebrity gym? I can’t remember if that’s the one with the dancing monkeys or not.”
On Thursday, McGregor continued to irritate Mayweather, who had his teenage daughter Iyanna “Money Yaya” Mayweather by his side on stage, by getting into her face during an anti-Floyd rant and saying, “Sing it for me beautiful Yaya.”
After the press conference, Mayweather (49-0, 26 KOs) was asked whether he deemed McGregor’s comments as being racist.
“Disrespecting my daughter, disrespecting the mother of my daughter, disrespecting black women, calling black people monkeys — it’s totally disrespectful,” Mayweather said. “I have a diverse team, a diverse staff. When I was young, I may have said some things that I shouldn’t have said when I was young. But we live, we learn and you don’t say those things when you get to a certain age. It’s all about growth and maturity.”
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