Dancing for Zion: Floyd Mayweather
The undefeated boxing champion has donated over $1 million to Israeli causes and received awards from multiple Jewish organizations.
Floyd Mayweather Jr. retired with an undefeated professional record of 50-0, ranked by BoxRec as the greatest pound-for-pound boxer and greatest welterweight of all time. He won world titles in 5 weight classes and earned over $1 billion in purses and pay-per-view royalties during his career. Beyond his athletic achievements, Mayweather has emerged as one of the most prominent non-Jewish celebrity advocates for Israel, with connections to the Jewish community stretching back decades and deepening dramatically in recent years.
Mayweather’s earliest and longest-standing tie to the Jewish community was through Bob Arum, founder of Top Rank Boxing and one of the most powerful figures in the sport. Arum has spoken publicly about the role of Judaism in his life and his involvement with the Chabad movement. Arum promoted Mayweather from 1996 until 2006, when Mayweather left to found Mayweather Promotions. Their relationship was famously contentious, with Mayweather accusing Arum of underpaying him, but it placed Mayweather in close professional proximity to a prominent figure of the Jewish community for years. Arum promoted Yuri Foreman, a Belarus-born, Israel-raised professional boxer who held the WBA super welterweight title from 2009 to 2010. Foreman affectionately referred to Arum as “my other rabbi.”
The Jewish world that surrounded Mayweather’s professional career eventually drew him into direct contact with Israel itself. After his exhibition fight in Dubai against YouTuber Deji, Mayweather arrived in Israel in November 2022 for a surprise visit. He visited the Western Wall in Jerusalem and prayed there, strolled through Jerusalem’s Machane Yehuda Market asking fans for shawarma recommendations, and attended the Tel Aviv basketball derby between Maccabi Tel Aviv and Hapoel Tel Aviv as a guest of his friend Xavier Munford—a former Hapoel Tel Aviv point guard. He also visited Aish HaTorah’s headquarters in Jerusalem, where he met with Aish leadership including Rabbi Steven Burg, Aish’s CEO, beginning what became a lasting relationship with the organization.
The Aish connection deepened over the following months and became central to Mayweather’s public identification with Israel. In March 2024, Mayweather returned to Aish’s Jerusalem headquarters — overlooking the Western Wall—where Burg presented him with the Champion for Israel Award, “a special honor reserved for those who continue to advocate against hate and antisemitism and stand up for Israel.” Mayweather told the assembled crowd: “Aish has welcomed me and my team in Jerusalem before, and it is very exciting to be back. This place is amazing. Everyone should come and visit here.”
The same period that brought Mayweather closer to figures like Burg also brought him into contact with associates of a far more controversial kind. One of Mayweather’s most controversial connections to the Jewish community involves Jona Rechnitz, a Jewish businessman who became a close associate and friend. According to legal documents from a 2026 lawsuit Mayweather filed against Rechnitz alleging fraud, Rechnitz began developing a relationship with Mayweather around 2017 through a mutual acquaintance. Rechnitz had previously pleaded guilty in 2016 to conspiracy to commit honest services wire fraud involving bribing NYPD officials, and later accompanied Mayweather to Israel in March 2024.
Whatever controversies later emerged from the Rechnitz relationship, Mayweather’s public alignment with Israel reached its peak in the months following October 7, 2023. Within days of the Hamas attack, Mayweather dispatched his private jet—”Air Mayweather”—to Israel loaded with over 5,000 pounds of supplies including food, water, and bulletproof vests for both IDF soldiers and civilians. He also posted on Instagram: “I stand with Israel against the Hamas terrorists… I stand with Israel and Jews all around the world. I condemn antisemitism at all cost.”
In December 2023, he was honored with the “Champion of Israel” award at an American Friends of Magen David Adom gala in Miami Beach, where the event raised $4 million. In March 2024, he traveled to Israel again, visiting the Dan Family Aish World Center in Jerusalem, where he received the Champion for Israel Award from the Orthodox outreach organization Aish, presented by Rabbi Steven Burg. He wore a Star of David hat and necklace, sang songs in Hebrew, and met with students. Also during the March 2024 trip, he visited United Hatzalah headquarters in Jerusalem and toured their Dispatch and Command Center, and separately visited Magen David Adom’s Marcus National Blood Services Center in Ramla, where he dedicated a fleet of ambucycles—the motorcycle-based emergency response vehicles—dubbed the “Floyd Fleet,” in the words of AFMDA CEO Catherine Reed: “The Floyd Fleet will save thousands of lives in record time and wouldn’t have been possible without him.”
The honors and visits soon translated into more substantial financial commitments. In October 2024, he donated $100,000 to United Hatzalah specifically for the purchase of 100 bulletproof vests for volunteers responding under fire. In December 2024, he donated $1 million to United Hatzalah at the organization’s annual Miami Gala, which raised $14 million total. He also launched the “Mayweather Israel Initiative,” a charity program aimed at giving free birthday presents to every Israeli war orphan, delivered via a van called the “Floyd Mobile.”
This sustained pattern of giving eventually drew recognition from the most prominent Jewish political organization in American politics. In November 2025, Mayweather attended the Republican Jewish Coalition Annual Leadership Summit in Las Vegas, where he received the “World Champion for Israel” award. He declared on stage, “I’m not with you guys 10 percent, 50 percent. I will always be the voice for the people in Israel. I will always stand behind the country of Israel.” The RJC honored him specifically for his financial donations, visits to injured IDF soldiers, and vocal opposition to antisemitism.
Unsurprisingly, Mayweather has publicly aligned with President Donald Trump—one of the most pro-Zionist presidents in American history—on multiple occasions. He attended Trump’s first inauguration in 2017 and posed for photos with Trump and Donald Trump Jr. In early 2025, Mayweather appeared on Fox Business’s Making Money and declared, “I think Trump is a great president, actually he’s the best president in my eyes. He’s the best president we ever had. Great businessman, and that’s what it’s about.” Elon Musk reposted the video.
Outside the ballrooms and award galas, Mayweather’s buck-dancing for Israel has also exposed him to direct hostility. In December 2024, while at Hatton Garden jewelry district in London, Mayweather was confronted by a crowd after declaring he was “proud to support the Jews.” A member of the crowd took a swing at him; his security team evacuated him. Mayweather denied being “punched or touched in any way” in an Instagram statement.
Mayweather’s transformation from a ring general to a performative puppet for Jewish causes serves as a jarring reminder that even the most celebrated athletes can be molded into buck-dancers for Zion, who eagerly trade their dignity for the hollow approval of Jewish oligarchs that treats them as little more than a temporary prop in a grander project of subversion. Being a shabbos goy is a problem that transcends color lines. As long as public figures of all racial backgrounds and confessions are incentivized to submit to an agenda that is not their own, we will remain trapped beneath the suffocating grip of organized Jewry that requires our total cultural surrender to survive.
There’s no bobbing and weaving your way out of this dilemma.
https://www.josealnino.org/p/buck-dancing-for-zion-floyd-mayweather