Rizin is in an embarrassing situation after they announced that Floyd Mayweather would be fighting Tenshin Nasukawa on New Year’s Eve only for the boxer to completely deny it.
The Japanese promotion attempted to address the situation with an official statement which has been translated into English by MMA Sucka:
At a press conference held on November 5th we at Rizin announced that the Rizin 14 fight card at the Saitama Super Arena on December 31st would be headlined by Floyd Mayweather vs. Tenshin Nasukawa. However, shortly after this announcement, Mr. Mayweather himself made an announcement through social media. This message seemed to be insisting that the match had been canceled, and we sincerely apologize for this confusion.
RIZIN Chairman, Nobuyuki Sakakibara, is currently holding discussions towards carrying out the match based on the original contract between our promotion and Mr. Mayweather. This [is] based on the basic agreement we initially did have with Mr. Mayweather. We hope to have a clearer announcement next week.
In truth, we would like to make a clearer announcement now. Unfortunately, as of writing, we are not in the position to report our current negotiating situation to you all. Thus, this statement will concern our ongoing developments. Sadly, we are afraid to inform you all that we will be needing more time. Again, we sincerely apologize for the confusion and concern this has been causing.
Given Mayweather believes he was tricked into attending the original press conference, along with the litany of other reasons this fight will be almost impossible to make, these ‘negotiations’ are not going to be easy.
There has been no further statement from the boxer since he took to Instagram to claim he never intended to fight Tenshin. The original announcement made headlines all over the world with the media happy to believe this far fetched sounding matchup would happen.
However the ensuing publicity has bee less than positive with Mayweather saying he had never heard of Tenshin before this. Even Conor McGregor got in on the act, questioning who the Asian fighter was in a post that drew accusations of racism.
