50 Cent Says He Wants to Make Mayweather vs Pacquiao Happen

If you missed it late last night or this morning, the boxing world got a bit of a shock jolt of news when it was reported that 50 Cent's TMT Promotions idea may be dead, but the rapper-"actor"-businessman isn't quite out of boxing, as he and Manny Pacquiao are planning to form an alliance to pursue a promotional venture.

50 Cent, whose real name is Curtis Jackson, which you either know or don't care about, says that he still considers Floyd Mayweather a friend, and doesn't expect him to be upset with his business decision:

"I look at Floyd like he’s my younger brother. ... He earns so much that he just spend. Run around and spend what he want. So, there’s no urgency, to anything. And when the communication breaks and it starts to not be -- look, my concept of TMT is ‘the fight you want to see.' It’s Floyd [Mayweather and] Manny Pacquiao, the fight. ... I think (Floyd will) go ‘I wish him luck.’ … It’s not like I’m not in communication with him. I texted him and told him everything."

Regardless of 50's loyal text to Mayweather, there have definitely been rumors flying about the relationship between the two being seriously heated lately, over matters either personal or professional, or maybe both.

But the way he's talking about this, I think, makes sense. Mayweather wants to fancy himself a promoter, but he's never really done that job before, and his Mayweather Promotions company isn't a licensed promoter, even if they do some of that work. Leonard Ellerbe runs that business. Floyd isn't really hands-on in a lot of ways.

And I think what 50 is saying here is that Floyd can sometimes be in his own world, and when it's time to sit down and talk business, for real, and shut the outside stuff off for a while -- well, Floyd's not used to that, and may never get used to doing that. Basically, I think what he's saying is that Mayweather wasn't showing the TMT idea much respect. If 50 Cent wants to actually get this off the ground and running -- and I've got no reason to suspect he doesn't want to -- then Mayweather may not be the best business partner, even though Mayweather would be the best guy to have in the crew as an attraction.

Pacquiao and Michael Koncz are different. They do have a small promotional group, too, and Koncz admits that that's mostly his responsibility and he hasn't done a lot with it. Will Manny and Koncz be the right guys for 50 to jump into boxing head-first? I don't know. But I think they're probably a little more reliable than Mayweather, who I'm not saying is a jerk for this, but maybe he's just kind of a flaky guy who does whatever he wants all the time because he can, if that makes sense, and that's not the best person to be in business with. Maybe this is just a totally smart move by 50 Cent.

But of course that's all just me imagining some bullshit for the sake of discussing this.

As for the other part, if 50 Cent's idea was to start TMT as a company, with its first big thing being THE BIG THING (Mayweather vs Pacquiao), I think I understand his logic there, too, and why he beefed on Golden Boy's Oscar De La Hoya before.

[ Related: Pacquiao vs Marquez IV Set for 12/8 ]

Maybe 50 sees it as less a problem with Bob Arum than with Oscar and/or Richard Schaefer. I'm not saying that's true or that I think that -- I wouldn't know -- but maybe that's how he sees it. Maybe he figured that if he and his team were there representing Floyd in negotiations with Top Rank, then the fight could get done, rather than with Richard Schaefer and Golden Boy on the other side. Schaefer and Arum have a bad relationship and there's no believing they could make that fight happen, even with all that money on the table. But 50 Cent has no relationship, as far as I know, with Bob Arum or anyone at Top Rank, other than Arum wished him luck when he announced his intentions to promote boxing.

Am I giving 50 Cent too much credit here? Maybe, maybe not. But fuck it -- it's a good story, and I'll spin it all day. This has only just begun, too.