Mayweather vs. Ortiz: Why Playing Villain Is Most Marketable Move for Mayweather

Floyd “money” Mayweather is a genius.

He isn’t one of the richest athletes in sports for nothing.

Nobody knows how to market themselves better than the most hated boxer in the sport.

Odds are, you don’t like the guy. That’s exactly what he wants. He wants to be the most hated man in sports, and it’s working beautifully. You watch him curse up a storm on HBO’s 24/7, you watch him burn $100 bills and you hear about his legal troubles, and the hate just keeps building up.

Saturday’s KO over Victor Ortiz drew the highest amount of PPV’s the sport has ever seen…70 percent presumably rooting against Mayweather.

This phenomenon is very similar to WWE, where fans pick their most hated villain, then consume everything about that person to find more ammunition to hate him.

They become consumed with watching this man fail

Floyd gave his haters plenty to work with after the questionable decision to start pounding on Ortiz the second after he hugged him. It was a perfectly legal move, and Ortiz clearly violated the cardinal rule of “protect yourself at all times," yet the average boxing fan is still up in arms.

It has angered people to the point that Huffington Post blogger Michael W. felt the need  to write this passage:

"

When athletes become content with victory at all costs, even dirty play, it's a sign that the end of the sport's prominence is looming large. Legality doesn't necessarily equate with fair or good. In sports, while it is legal to run up the score, it is not considered good sportsmanship.

"

I’m pretty sure boxing isn’t dead after two questionable punches.

How quickly everyone forgets that it was a highly illegal head-butt by Ortiz that started the whole stoppage.

People are disappointing that Mayweather didn’t take the moral high ground in the situation. It begs the question…why is the word moral being passed around a sport where the objective is to literally punch somebody until they can’t get up?

Mayweather could care less about all of the venom that has been spewed in his direction since the fight.

He still made over $20M for the fight, and he is getting paper cuts counting all the money he gets from the PPV’s.

America is pissed off because the bad guy won again. In fact, the bad guy has never lost in his career.

Until somebody knocks him off his horse, until somebody leaves in bloodily on the ring floor, the hate will only continue to grow.

That’s why a guy named Manny, a philanthropist in every sense of the word, is the only hope to satisfy the vast majority of people that want to see the villain ultimately lose.

Until then…Mayweather will be laughing all the way to the bank.