Torii Hunter offers apology, explanation for tweet about Floyd Mayweather
Minnesota Twins outfielder Torii Hunter created an unexpected — at least in his mind — uproar on Saturday night when he tweeted that what Floyd Mayweather does in the ring is strictly business, and what he does outside the ring is non- essential or should have no impact on how Mayweather the fighter is viewed.
Understandably, this rubbed some people the wrong way, as it came across that Hunter was willing to ignore or dismiss Mayweather’s history of alleged domestic violence.
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Here’s the tweet in question.
Not surprisingly, that tweet disappeared from Hunter’s feed quickly on Saturday night.
Even less surprising, he offered an apology and an explanation on Sunday, stating that he wasn’t taking Mayweather’s history of domestic violence into consideration when tweeting, and he was purely focused on Mayweather the fighter.
“All I was saying is he’s a great fighter,” Hunter said. “I don’t agree with domestic violence. That’s stupid. That’s the dumbest thing ever. If I see somebody fight his wife or his girlfriend, I probably would help them.”
“I was just having fun and whatever, and somebody took it too far,” Hunter said. “I apologize if I offended anybody, but there’s no way you endorse domestic violence. That’s stupid.
“Just because I go for Floyd Mayweather and choose that he was going to win it, that’s all I said. I said what he does outside the ring doesn’t have anything to do with me and my decision. That’s what I should have said: ‘My decision on who was going to win.’ “
There’s a delicate line we all walk on social media, but Hunter has to be a little more aware of what he’s saying and how he’s presenting it. What a lot of people associate with Mayweather’s life outside the ring and outside the spotlight is the domestic violence issue. If Hunter doesn’t, that’s fine, but it’s there, it can’t or shouldn’t be completely ignored, and it’s not a gymnastics stretch to make that correlation.
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Here’s more from Hunter.
“I wasn’t even thinking about domestic violence the whole time,” Hunter said. “People on Twitter, they pick and choose and they’ll say what they want. You have one guy say it, and it’s like a disease. That has nothing to do with domestic violence.
“What (Mayweather) does with his money, what he does with his lifestyle, stuff like that — I don’t condone anything. If that’s what he wants to do, he does it. That’s what I was talking about. I wasn’t even talking about domestic violence. Then it just came up, and I was like, ‘What?’”
“Twitter is done for me,” Hunter said. “Instagram is cool. You get photos, no words. Twitter is not safe at all.”
Under the circumstances, moving away from Twitter is probably a pretty good idea.
Like it or not, social media is a microscope, and that’s especially true for athletes and entertainers. In such an environment, there will be misunderstandings, misconceptions and misinterpretations that lead to upheaval. Whether or not that truly applies here is something only Hunter himself knows, but what he has to know is that people are paying attention now, and people still remember the controversial comments he’s made in the past.
If he’s looking for the benefit of the doubt, he’ll be looking for a long time.
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Mark Townsend is a writer for Big League Stew on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter! Follow @Townie813
