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How a phony Floyd Mayweather $5.9 million bet rumor went viral … again

June 3, 2013
by Larry Brown
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Floyd Mayweather Jr.Incarcerated Bob

Floyd MayweatherEvery so often before a big sporting event, rumors leak out that Floyd Mayweather has wagered millions on the game.

The rumors start with unreliable sources who have zero proof. And both prominent rumors have started from the exact same source.

Last year, a known rumormongerer on Twitter named “Incarcerated Bob” said that Mayweather wagered $3 million on Michigan +14 against Alabama football for their Sept. 1 game. Alabama won 41-14, so if that were true, Mayweather would have lost $3 million the game.

Mayweather told Jim Rome in March that the most he has won betting on a game was around $1.1 or $1.2 million, and that the most he recalled losing was around $1 million. He specifically said he lost around $900,000 on the Seahawks-Packers Monday Night Football “Fail Mary” game.

People seem to conveniently forget all this information when those unfounded rumors pop up.

Another rumor came up on Monday via some Twitter handle I’d never heard of. The Twitter account is called “Vegas Gambling Steam,” and what do you know? The Twitter account is “IBN affiliated,” which means it’s affiliated with the same Incarcerated Bob character. The rumor later was written up by Incarcerated Bob on his own website. Nice formula — hype up a rumor on one of your Twitter accounts, write about it on your other, and watch the clicks file in.

Now anytime there is a rumor about Mayweather betting tons of money on a game, the information spreads like crazy and is great for clicks, so sites will post about it and laugh all the way to the pageviews bank. Black Sports Online seems to be the first big site to give the report traction, and from there, it was game on. Other sites like Complex and Dime Magazine followed suit, and then bigger outlets like Bleacher Report, NESN, FOX Sports, and the New York Daily News jumped on it. All of them were sourcing the exact same rumor from Incarcerated Bob’s affiliate probably without realizing it. Even Yahoo! Sports’ Kevin Iole tried investigating the rumor, and most people he quoted didn’t seem to believe it.

Then the worst story written about the rumor came from The Sports Xchange, which somehow incorrectly attributed the rumor to Pregame.com, a genuine sports betting information site, rather than Pregame Steam, a phony outlet.

So, how do we know that the rumor is bogus? First of all, it emanated from a totally bogus source and had no verification from anyone legitimate. Two, Mayweather has said the most he’s wagered on events is around $1 million. This would be an absurd jump to $6 million. Lastly, in a logistical sense, Mayweather simply would not be able to find a sports book to take that much action. The rumor says he spread the wager over nine sports books, but he wouldn’t even be able to do that.

The whole thing is phony. Even if he didn’t ask for them, the rumors are great for Mayweather because it helps keep up his “Money” persona, so he has no reason to debunk them. Please keep this in mind any time these rumors come up in the future. They all start with the same fake, unreliable source, and they’re all untrue.

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