Two guys are interested in a girl at a bar.

Guy A needs his friends to help him talk to her.  He could win her on his own but he feels safer in numbers; less pressure.

Guy B never acknowledges the girl's presence.  He doesn't chase girls; girls chase him.

Who is more self-assured?

In today's 24-hour sports news cycle, every move an athlete makes is critiqued ad nauseum.

In the last month, America's two greatest professional athletes, LeBron James and Floyd Mayweather Jr., have made decisions that have significantly altered or reinforced public perception of said athlete.

Both men engage in sports that the public holds certain expectations for those who rest atop the food chain.

We want our best basketball players to be leaders who win championships on teams built with a distinct hierarchy. 

There's the man, the sidekick, and the silent majority of usable parts.  We don't want our best players miscast into sidekick roles, especially if he has the ultimate say in the matter.

We also want our best boxers to fight the top opponents of their era.  

And if a boxer has a claim at the pound-for-pound throne, and another boxer within the same weight class shares a similar claim, we expect these fighters to settle the score inside the ring, not outside of it.

We ask our great athletes to take on all challenges, not run from them.

So why did LeBron James sign with the Miami Heat? 

Why hasn't Floyd Mayweather agreed to fight Manny Pacquiao?

In the case of LeBron, society expected James to think as highly of himself as his fans do.  For years, he craftily built up an image. 

He was King James.  Forget Kobe, he was the heir to Michael Jordan's throne.

But as seasons passed, and LeBron continued to take 60-win teams nowhere, his true colors began to show. 

At 25-years-old—LeBron panicked.

More so than any of his biggest critics, LeBron seriously entertained the likelihood of finishing his career having never won a championship.

He mistakenly thought fans would admire him for joining the Miami Heat to win. He never considered how poorly his attempt at building a stacked college intramural team would come across.

Any accomplishments he attains from this point forward will be taken with a grain of salt.  After signing with Miami, The Cowardly Lion's roar will forever ring hollow.

Mayweather has heard similar criticisms.

If he is as great as he says he is, and he says he is better than Muhammad Ali and Sugar Ray Robinson, then why doesn't he prove it by beating Manny Pacquiao?

Win or lose, Mayweather will earn more respect from fans by simply fighting him, than he will now that he hasn't. 

In many ways, this proponent is very similar to James's current situation—putting aside the fact that Mayweather has already accomplished far more than James at this point of their respective careers.

But in the cases of James and Mayweather, there's an underlying theme that has gone unsaid.

James, inadvertently, threw his legacy out the window by chasing society's expectations of him. 

He knows that, to validate his career, we expect him to win championships.  He just mistakenly assumed that we would admire him for collecting these rings by any means necessary.

Mayweather, on the other hand, is never going to conform to society's expectations.

Why?

Because he does not care about society's expectations.

Society has put the onus on him to prove to us that he's worthy of his accolades by demanding a fight with Pacquiao that would break all sorts of records and take its place in history as the defining fight of our generation.

Mayweather's response? 

Posting Mobile Uploads of his $500 diamond studded iPod or $5,000 lobster dinner on Facebook.

Mayweather is simply not concerned with our opinions.  If LeBron was not concerned with our opinions, he would have never signed with Miami.

LeBron believes he needs that girl from the bar to validate his excellence—Mayweather doesn't.

You tell me who the coward is.