Early Saturday morning reports surfaced that Turner Sports Rachael Nichols as well as HBO Boxing’s Michelle Beadle had their credentials revoked per request of Floyd Mayweather’s team. This report was later proved to be false information as Kelly Swanson, the head of credential distribution for the mega-fight,  explained on Twitter that it was all a big misunderstanding and both Beadle and Nichols have credentials for the fight.

So how did we get here? Well, it was simple Beadle took to Twitter as well as Nichols to her account expressing the promotion revoked  their credential for the fight as well as Chris Mannix of Sports Illustrated stated that Martin Rogers of USA Today was banned as well. All three have had a history of questioning Floyd Mayweather’s past relationship with women as well as shining light on his conviction of domestic violence that sent Mayweather away for two months after fighting Miguel Cotto in 2013.  Nichols might be best known for her interview with Mayweather that was very uncomfortable for all parties involved as it focused on the past transgressions of Mayweather and his pattern of domestic violence, which is below.

Beadle, on the other hand was very jovial with Floyd until she was informed of the Mayweather’s past in which she felt no love loss for the undefeated fighter. The former host of SportsNation, Beadle, was best known to the American public when she took aim at Ray Rice’s domestic violence in casino elevator that resulted in Stephen A. Smith making a fool out of himself more so than usual. Beadle has been vocal as of late talking about Mayweather’s past with women as the lead up to the fight has intensified.

Even bigger than all of this is that boxing has slowly begun to control the media access and by picking and choosing who is “qualified” which for the most part is authentic and legitimate and provides the sport with the highest level of journalism, but has a bit of grey area that has found some frustrated. Some of the biggest boxing writers of this generation had their credentials denied for Mayweather-Pacquiao only to be filled with writers who do not share the same enthusiasm for the sport obtaining one. For those writers like myself, who live hoping to getting a credential since it is never clear if we will be approved easily, I guess I will speak for all of us in saying it is frustrated having to fill journalistic duties, but also live in fear of consequences for reporting honestly. It is even sadder, because this is a cultural shift as well as political shift to silence negative attention from political actions that are unpopular to those at the top.

In the end, it appears it is all for not, but it also is an interesting story to know that the access to fight is being treated as a carrot dangled in front of reporters noses as if saying “…thousands of people want to be here, so if you make a mistake we will gladly take away your access.” On the hand, this could of been a clever ploy by Nichols and Beadle to garner more attention to a cause they have been campaigning for national attention mere hours before the fight. Will we ever know the truth, probably not, but one thing is for sure this fight is so big that just getting into the fight is news worthy.