There’s a reason why some of the best stories in sports are too good to be true, it’s because they are.
On Tuesday, a story from a website calling itself houstonchronicle-tv.com, put out a story claiming that Floyd Mayweather planned to donate $200 million dollars to hurricane relief efforts in Houston. After all, why not? Mayweather just banked the largest pay day in American sports history, Houston just suffered one of the most calamitous hurricanes in U.S. history, the story was a match made in media heaven.
Except that it’s bogus.
The website, purposely designed to look the Houston Chronicle’s website, is a well-registered fake news manufacturer by FactCheck.org. Also, according to The Big Lead, “In recent months, it has been part of a fake Trump quote story, circulated a fake story about a Gospel singer dying that was debunked on Snopes.com, and reported that a Rugby star who is very much alive was shot to death in a drive-by shooting in Paris.”
Really, the story should have come across as bogus even without Fact Check. Floyd Mayweather’s net worth, after this past weekend, is somewhere in the vicinity of $440 million dollars. He also owes the IRS over $22 million dollars. While it’s entirely possible that Floyd will donate a large sum to hurricane relief. It’s extremely unlikely that he would donate nearly half of his net worth. Especially after fighting, what he claims, will be his last fight.
However, the report that he would donate $200 million is most definitely fake.