Brooklyn Nets guard C.J. Watson has mostly avoided the spotlight this year; outside of his brush-ups with Nate Robinson in this series with the Chicago Bulls, the backup guard’s name has mostly been left out of the news. But Watson’s name is front and center in another sport star’s trouble with the law — boxing’s Floyd Mayweather, who spent two months in prison for assaulting ex-girlfriend Jose Harris after hearing of a relationship between Harris and Watson.
From the Yahoo! report:
The altercation happened when Mayweather returned to Harris’ property at 5 a.m. on September 9. Police had already been summoned following a verbal dispute hours earlier, but Mayweather came back. Harris says she was asleep on the living room couch when she woke up to Mayweather, holding her cell phone, yelling at her about text messages from NBA guard C.J. Watson.
Mayweather and Harris were no longer together; the boxer had by then installed Jackson in his home and as his main love interest. But, according to Harris, it was not acceptable to Mayweather for her to see other men while living in a house he owned.
“Are you having sex with C.J.?” Mayweather yelled at Harris, according to the arrest report.
“Yes, that is who I am seeing now,” she replied.
Mayweather then grabbed her by the hair and punched her in the back of the head “with a closed fist several times,” according to the report. He then pulled her off the couch by her hair and twisted her left arm.
Yahoo! Sports reached out to Mayweather for comment via chief adviser, Leonard Ellerbe, and lawyer, Richard Wright. Neither responded.
“All I heard is, ‘Who is C.J. Watson, C.J. Watson the basketball player?’ ” Harris says. “From there it was just … bad. I was powerless. He was holding me down. I couldn’t fight back. The kids were screaming and crying, ‘You’re hurting my Mom.’ ”
At one point, Mayweather yelled, “I’m going to kill you and the man you are messing around with,” Harris told police. “I’m going to have you both disappear.”
The relationship between Harris & Watson — and Mayweather’s violent reaction — was originally reported in 2010, but a scene in Showtime’s “30 Days In May” used to promote Mayweather’s upcoming fight with Robert Guerrero that “attempted to rationalize Mayweather’s domestic violence conviction” forced Harris to speak out again.