Mayweather pulls back on announced Japan fight

Floyd Mayweather Jr. is implying that a planned Dec. 31 fight with a Rizin Fighting Federation kickboxer isn’t going to happen over differences involving the magnitude of the event.

In an Instagram post Wednesday, Mayweather said he initially agreed to a small exhibition and that he and his team were “completely derailed” and should have put a stop to Sunday’s news conference at the time.

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Now that I am back on U.S. soil after a long and disappointing trip to Tokyo, I now have the time to address you, my fans and the media in regards to the upcoming event on December 31st that was recently announced. First and foremost, I want it to be clear that I, Floyd Mayweather, never agreed to an official bout with Tenshin Nasukawa. In fact (with all due respect) I have never heard of him until this recent trip to Japan. Ultimately, I was asked to participate in a 9 minute exhibition of 3 rounds with an opponent selected by the “Rizen Fighting Federation”. What I was originally informed of by Brent Johnson of “One Entertainment” was that this was to be an exhibition put on for a small group of wealthy spectators for a very large fee. This exhibition was previously arranged as a “Special Bout” purely for entertainment purposes with no intentions of being represented as an official fight card nor televised worldwide. Once I arrived to the press conference, my team and I were completely derailed by the new direction this event was going and we should have put a stop to it immediately. I want to sincerely apologize to my fans for the very misleading information that was announced during this press conference and I can assure you that I too was completely blindsided by the arrangements that were being made without my consent nor approval. For the sake of the several fans and attendees that flew in from all parts of the world to attend this past press conference, I was hesitant to create a huge disturbance by combating what was being said and for that I am truly sorry. I am a retired boxer that earns an unprecedented amount of money, globally, for appearances, speaking engagements and occasional small exhibitions.

A post shared by Floyd Mayweather (@floydmayweather) on Nov 7, 2018 at 10:53am PST

On Sunday, Rizin announced that Mayweather would face 20-year-old Japanese kickboxing phenom Tenshin Nasukawa in Saitama, Japan, on New Year’s Eve. Mayweather wrote in his Wednesday post that he never agreed to a fight with Nasukawa and had — “with all due respect” — never heard of him before visiting Japan.

Key details of the proposed fight were never announced, including the specific rules of the bout, the number of rounds, the weight limit, how the fight broadcast would be distributed and what type of gloves they would wear.

Now it appears the whole thing will be scrapped, with Mayweather apologizing to his fans for the “very misleading information that was announced.”

During the news conference, Mayweather had said: “This particular bout is a special bout as far as we’re giving the people something they’ve never seen before. The world has never seen Mayweather compete live in Tokyo. Throughout the years, I’ve seen a lot of fans from Japan come to Las Vegas and come to the U.S., but me and my team said let’s do something different. Let’s go over to Japan.

“As far as the weight class, we’re not really worried about that. It’s all about me going out there and displaying my skills against another skillful fighter. So we both want to go out there and display our skills and give people excitement. I just want to entertain. I will speak with my team and I will let my team get with Rizin and I’m pretty sure they’ll come up with a great idea, but it’s all about entertainment and that’s what we want to do for the people.”