For almost a decade now, Floyd Mayweather and 50 Cent have been feuding like Charlie and his brother’s fateful finger. The trash-talking for the proverbial phone-based cat and dog fight has become so tangled and longwinded that it is hard to keep track of when and why it all started.
The trash-talking for the ongoing public began to boil over back in 2014 when 50 Cent awoke to the news that Floyd Mayweather had told him to go forth and multiply in an online post. 50 Cent responded by saying that rather than engage in the ASL Ice bucket Challenge, he would donate $750,000 to a charity of Mayweather’s choosing if he could read “one full page of a Harry Potter book.” He then later reappraised his proposal saying, “We know you can’t pronounce those words in a Harry Potter book, so we going to let you read Cat in the Hat.”
The famous illiterate boxer responded by displaying two cheques totalling over $72miilion USD on his Twitter account, in a move that seemed to say ‘with all this money who cares about missing out on the joys of Dr Suess’, however he did not offer to give money to charity which seemed to be the real loser here.
Prior to this initial outbreak of verbal jabs, the pair were actually close friends it would seem. While ostensibly it was simply an argument that first prompted the feud, in recent years Mayweather has hinted at some of the finer details behind it.
“You can’t hang out with me every day for years then all of a sudden if I don’t give you half of my company you’re like ‘you’re dumb, you’re stupid, you can’t do this and you can’t do that,” Mayweather told Champside podcast.
Later adding, “But if I can’t do all these things, why are you hanging around with me? That’s all I’m trying to add. If I’m such a person that doesn’t know certain things, and I’m not that sharp, why you want to be around with me every day.”
The issue of money seems to have always been an underlying issue. In February 50 Cent claimed that Floyd Mayweather would have to return to the ring to take on YouTuber’s because he had run out of money following his retirement.
Speaking to Hot 97 radio stating 50 Cent said, “[In boxing] It’s fight, get the money, spend the money, fight. With the lifestyle that money’s gone. Trust me. Now it’s like if you call him he’ll be at your local nightclub because he needs that action right now.”
In truth, it is hard to get to the source of the feud or separate fact from fiction. Whether it was a back and forth that started over money when 50 Cent handled Mayweather’s promotion briefly following his release from prison in 2012 or something more personal is hard to tell amid the jives, jabs and Bugatti’s.
