14 DAY TRIAL // Boxing champ Floyd Mayweather Jr. took his time in addressing rapper 50 Cent’s own version of the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge, but he sure made it worth the while. Charity is about giving and if Fiddy really wanted to donate, he should have just done so, without looking to shame anyone else.
In case you’re out of the loop on this one, here’s how it went down: the rapper was nominated for the Ice Bucket Challenge but instead of just doing it, he tried to tweak it a bit so he could diss his former friend turned enemy Mayweather as well.
The two have been feuding for at least a couple of years over $2 million (€1.54 million) Fiddy says Floyd still owes him. So Fiddy came up with this idea to humiliate the boxer: he would donate $750,000 (€579,240) to any charity Floyd chose if the latter went on camera reading one full page of any “Harry Potter” book.
The rapper changed his mind shortly after, saying he would also settle for Cat in the Hat, as long as Mayweather did it live on Kimmel. There’s a years-old rumor that the boxer is illiterate, which would have meant that, if he accepted the challenge, he would have embarrassed himself in front of millions.
Until now, the boxer has refused to address this, his only reply to the challenge being a tweet with a photo of a check for almost $73 million (€56.37 million), implying that he didn’t need the rapper’s money.
To Yahoo!, Mayweather says that he wasn’t about to scoop this low under the false pretense of “charity" because, if Fiddy really wanted to donate, he could have done it without this public challenge.
“I was thinking of something, you know, when you asked me about 50 Cent. If you want to donate money, donate money to the Mike Brown family,” the boxer says, referring to the African-American teen shot and killed by a policeman in Ferguson, Missouri, last month, even though he wasn’t armed.
“I shouldn't stop you. Our company, me and Leonard [Ellerbee], we have been donating hundreds of thousands of dollars to different organizations for years without any media, without getting credit.… The best thing for 50 Cent to do, and there are no hard feelings, is to give that $750,000 to Mike Brown's family,” the boxer continues.
Ellerbee, who is the CEO of Mayweather Productions, agrees: the rapper was definitely not feeling in a very charitable mood if he tied his grand gesture to the hope of seeing Mayweather humiliated.
“If I would have done that, there would have been more stories written and more talk about that, and at the end of the day, for what? What do I have to defend that for? I know firsthand, as does anybody who has anything to do with our promotion, our business, that when it comes to reading, Floyd can read perfectly fine,” Ellerbee continues.
They do have a valid point there, when they say 50 Cent should have just donated the money if he really wanted to do a good deed and not go looking for trouble and scandal on social media.
Read this $72,276,000.00. God bless. pic.twitter.com/dpwE3X7eLR
— Floyd Mayweather (@FloydMayweather) August 23, 2014
