Undefeated boxing champion Floyd Mayweather , normally the picture of confidence and even arrogance , may have finally met the one challenger he can’t beat. Literacy. Challenged by former friend, rapper 50 Cent, to read a a single page of a Harry Potter book aloud, Mayweather has remained uncharacteristically silent.
And perhaps with good reason.
Mayweather, 37, and the 39-year-old 50 Cent — whose real name is Curtis James Jackson III — at one time appeared inseparable. But about two years ago, for some reason that still remains a bit foggy, the once bosom buddies had an acrimonious split .
The two have been trading public insults ever since, but this week, 50 Cent may have upped the ante to a point where Floyd Mayweather would rather just fold. In an online video in which 50 Cent was supposed to take the ALS “Ice Bucket Challenge,” he instead challenged Mayweather not to dump a container of ice water over his head — but to read, out loud and in public, a single page of a Harry Potter book.
The New York-based rapper then repeated the challenge in an Instagram posting, in which he offered to donate $750,000 to the charity of Mayweather’s choice if Mayweather would read that single Harry Potter page out loud “without starting and stopping or f****** up.”
Then on Friday, the rapper modified his challenge in an another online video, saying that he now had late night comedian and talk show host Jimmy Kimmel in his corner — and he had decided to make the challenge even easier .
“I got a phone call from my man Jimmy Kimmel. Jimmy said if Floyd accepts the challenge then he’ll put it on the actual show,” said 50 Cent. “We don’t want to put pressure on you. We know you can’t pronounce those words in that Harry Potter book, so we’re going to let you read Cat in the Hat .”
What makes 50 Cent so confident — $750,000 worth of confident — that Floyd Mayweather can’t even read a Dr. Seuss book without mistakes? Perhaps from his time spent in Mayweather’s presence he knows something about the world’s top-rated pound-for-pound fighter that the public doesn’t realize.
But the morning disc jockeys on New York’s Power 105 radio station do.
On Friday morning, they went out of their way to humiliate Floyd Mayweather by playing an unedited clip of the boxer struggling to read a simple, 10-second “drop,” that is, a promo for the radio station — a short blurb that takes Floyd a full two minutes to complete .
Of course, the possibility remains that Mayweather’s apparent reading difficulties stem from dyslexia, but Mayweather has never said that he suffers from the condition, or from any learning disability. Mayweather attended high school until his senior year, when he dropped out to pursue his boxing career.
Here’s a recording of the Power 105 segment, including Mayweather apparently battling his less-than-proficient reading ability. Do you think this is why Floyd Mayweather has not yet responded to the 50 Cent reading challenge?