Boxer Mayweather pleads no contest to battery charge

LAS VEGAS, (Reuters) – Welterweight boxing  champion Floyd Mayweather Jr. pleaded no contest today in  Las Vegas to misdemeanor battery against a security guard,  prosecutors said.
Mayweather, a flamboyant 34-year-old boxer widely regarded  as the best defensive fighter of his generation, will pay a  $1,000 fine for the offense, according to the district  attorney’s office.
The five-division World Boxing Council world champion boxer  known as “Money” improved his professional record to a perfect  42-0, including 26 knockouts, with a fourth-round knockout of  Victor Ortiz in Las Vegas in September to claim the World Boxing  Council welterweight title.
Mayweather’s no contest plea to the misdemeanor battery  charge was entered by his attorney as part of a larger plea deal  that last week saw the boxer admit to wrongdoing in a separate  attack on his ex-girlfriend, said Tess Driver, a spokeswoman for  the Clark County District Attorney’s Office.
In that case, Mayweather pleaded guilty to one charge of  felony battery and no contest to two counts of harassment  stemming from a 2010 physical attack on Josie Harris and verbal  threats against two of his children with Harris.
Mayweather was sentenced to six months behind bars for that  outburst, but half of that jail term was suspended. He has been  ordered to appear in court on Jan. 6 to be transferred to jail,  officials said.
A no contest plea is treated as the equivalent of guilty in  Nevada criminal courts.
The plea came two months after Mayweather was acquitted of  charges he threatened to send armed acquaintances to harm two  security guards at a gated community in suburban Las Vegas where  he lives.