Mayweather pays up, $5.6 million goes to IRS

No matter how many times Floyd Mayweather Jr. and Leonard Ellerbe claimed that Mayweather didn't owe any money, it was hard to deny that the IRS was calling.

Let's recap the saga of Floyd's financial trouble stories, just really quickly, so that I don't have to be creative and work it into a proper paragraph:

• July 3: An AP report comes out claiming that Mayweather owes $6.17 million to the IRS, and has other assorted debts, up to and including $320.10 to a trash collector. Ellerbe tries to spin with, "Hey, you know how the IRS is! They find you! They take your stuff! Look at Wesley Snipes!" Nobody buys it.
• September 15: JP Morgan Chase Bank sues Mayweather for roughly $167,000, the remaining balance on a Maybach that Floyd bought with a loan from them. Mayweather is currently telling some story about reselling it himself, and the guy he sold it to screwed him, or whatever.
• September 17: Reports surface of the IRS coming in to take about $5 million of the purse Mayweather earned in his Saturday win over Juan Manuel Marquez. The Mayweather camp continues trying to convince people that there are no tax problems, despite every single piece of evidence pointing to massive problems for "Money."

Today, the AP reports that Mayweather has agreed to pay $5.6 million in back taxes. So either Mayweather and Ellerbe just now learned of this, or they've been lying. What do you figure?

Actually, that's not totally fair. I mean, they were lying, but it was also a matter of privacy. Neither Floyd nor anyone else wants their tax problems made public, no matter if they're a public figure or not. I get what the point was -- it's not our business, really, if Floyd is having money issues or not -- but someone should have had the savvy to at some point simply reply, "No comment." Instead, they bragged about money, with Floyd showing off his absurd mansion on "24/7" and blatantly saying, "My s**t's paid for, what about yours?"

That, in turn, just kind of further turns people off. Mayweather is a guy with devils and angels on his shoulders. No, I don't think he's a bad human being, really, but he's also not the misunderstood gentleman. He wants it both ways. He wants people to love the flashy braggart, and when they don't, he blames them for being biased. It's all insecurity, really, and it seems like every writer and media personality is starting to use the word "insecure" when talking about Floyd. There's really no hiding it anymore, and it's starting to at times outweigh his great talent. His internal personality wars are a lot more interesting than his fight with Marquez was for sure.