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Floyd Mayweather Jr. Is In Jail, But Just Passed Tiger Woods As The World’s Highest-Earning Athlete, So It’s Not All Bad We Guess

For all the talk about how golfing and boxing (well, mostly boxing) are dying sports, they still have some pretty well compensated athletes. Case in point: according to Sportige, Tiger Woods, who was the world’s highest paid athlete for as long as we can remember, just lost his crown.

The guy that passed him? He’s sitting in a jail cell.

Floyd Mayweather Jr. overtook Woods as the top earner in all of sports. And Mayweather’s pseudo rival, Manny Pacquiao, also passed Woods. Tiger three-shotted the list and came in at third, dropping two spots. The most interesting part about that: Tiger is by far earning the least from his sport out of any athlete in the top 10. Of the near $60 million reported of Tiger’s earnings, $55 million was through sponsorships.

Mayweather’s major wild-card is that he’s self-promoted. He jacks up his earnings on fights, and doesn’t have to pay a middle man. From his last two fights against Victor Ortiz and Miguel Cotto, Money May earned a whopping $85 million. (He doesn’t call his entourage the Money Team for nothing… well, to annoy people, sure, but they do earn money.) Not bad news to receive while sitting in the slammer.

Maybe Floyd will think twice about crying for his release now.

Here’s the full list, and how much each athlete earned.

Floyd Mayweather Jr. $85 million
Manny Pacquiao $62 million
Tiger Woods $59.4 million
LeBron James $53 million
Roger Federer $52.7 million
Kobe Bryant $52.3 million
Phil Mickelson $47.8 million
David Beckham $46 million
Cristiano Ronaldo $42.5 million
Peyton Manning $42.4 million

[Via Sportige]

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