Is Floyd Mayweather losing the press tour portion of his fight with Conor McGregor? Did McGregor cross a line by calling Mayweather “boy”? What, if anything, should the journalists association do about Ariel Helwani’s removal from the Showtime team?

All that and much more, including some insight on fighter pay from Dana White’s Tuesday Night Contender Series, in this week’s Twitter Mailbag. To ask a question of your own, tweet to @BenFowlkesMMA.

You know what press conferences tell you? They tell you who is better at doing press conferences. And clearly, that would be Conor McGregor. He’s a more energetic and charismatic figure on stage than Floyd Mayweather is, and it’s not even close. He’s also just generally easier to like, seeing as how he does not have a history of assaulting women.

Mayweather doesn’t excel at firing up a crowd the way McGregor does, except for when he’s inviting them to hate him. But he was right about one thing he said at Wednesday’s press conference in Toronto: The fans, as enthusiastic as they are, can’t fight for McGregor.

There is no part of me that believes Mayweather is the least bit worried about McGregor’s boxing skills. Mayweather has been at this since childhood. He’s seen just about everything there is to be seen inside a boxing ring. McGregor has never even been there as a professional.

It’s possible that Mayweather could get too confident and take it too easy in either preparation or execution. It’s possible that McGregor could land one magic punch.

But I’m reminded of what Larry Holmes said about Eric “Butterbean” Esch before their fight, as documented in the excellent story “Champion at Twilight” by Carlo Rotella. After briefly trying to sell the fight as a competitive affair, Holmes gave up and admitted the truth, which was that he didn’t see anyway Butterbean could hurt him.

“Maybe he lands a lucky punch, but I don’t believe in luck,” Holmes said. “Not that kind.”

Yeah, so, in case you didn’t hear, in two consecutive press conferences McGregor referred to Mayweather as “boy.” The first time he did it, encouraging a shadowboxing Mayweather to “dance for me, boy,” he seemed to immediately realize his error, at which point he switched to “dance for me, son.” Then at the following day’s press conference he went right back to “boy,” forcing me to do the Britney Spears cringe face.

If he’d said the same thing to Khabib Nurmagomedov, it wouldn’t be worth mentioning. But since he said it to a black fighter in a country where “boy” was historically used by white men in order to demean black men, it understandably set off some alarms.

You could make the case, and many have, that McGregor should get a pass on this one since he comes from a different country and culture where terms like this don’t have the same historical resonance. I can buy that to some extent. You can’t grow up in the U.S. and not know that a white man calling a black man “boy” carries some serious baggage. But could you grow up in Ireland and genuinely not know it? Sure, probably.

Still, at some point you’d think someone would whisper a history lesson in his ear. He’s working in the rare field in which he can call his colleague all sorts of derogatory names at considerable volume in the most public of settings, and he’ll be rewarded instead of punished. The list of words he’ll actually get in trouble for using is pretty short. It wouldn’t be so hard to steer clear of this one, and it would even make sense. (One of McGregor’s other talking points is how old Mayweather is; you can’t call a man 12 years your senior a boy.)

I don’t think McGregor is racist. I think he’s doing his best to be inflammatory, as he has with all his pre-fight talk, and that’s one of the main reasons he’s on that stage with Mayweather, getting ready to cash a huge check. But when these questionable moments start to pile up, soon even comments like this one, where he refers to “dancing monkeys” in the gym during “Rocky III,” begin to catch people’s attention.

Do I think he meant that as racist? No, I heard it and thought he actually meant the earlier scene, not the one where Apollo takes Rocky to the gym full of black fighters, but the one where Rocky’s so famous his training camp has become a media circus (and Mickey haaates it). Warning: I don’t remember it all that well, because who watches “Rocky III” except for the Mr. T parts, but you could almost convince me that there were literal dancing monkeys in that first gym. Hell, in the next movie Rocky’s brother-in-law sexualizes a robot that was given to him as a gift from his family. Dancing monkeys would not be unthinkable for the Rocky franchise.

Still, wouldn’t it be nice if we didn’t have to wonder what he meant by that? Or if we didn’t have to give ammunition to the “MMA is all racist skinheads” crowd? McGregor is MMA’s representative in what’s likely to be the most-watched pay-per-view fight of all time. It’d be great if we didn’t have to defend him before the fight even starts.

It’s a tough call for a few reasons. For one, the MMAJA is still in the process of adding members, so any action right now would have to come from those of us on the interim board, which is only six people. Speaking up or taking action would mean speaking on behalf of newly confirmed members, who had no say in the decision because they just joined this week. That doesn’t seem fair.

Also, while I think it’s extremely petty (and yet soooooo in character) on Dana White’s part if indeed he did pressure Showtime into yanking a job opportunity away from Ariel Helwani, it’s still an employment issue – not an access issue. If White had banned Helwani from attending this press tour, that would be different. But he didn’t. Helwani is there at every stop, doing his job as a journalist for the same outlet he’s more or less always worked for.

Does that make it a cool move on the part of White or on the part of Showtime, which just let itself be dragged into a nonsensical grudge by caving to the demands of one of the least essential parties to this fight? No it does not. But the MMAJA is and should be focused on creating and maintaining an environment where media members can effectively do their jobs. All week at this traveling circus, Helwani has been doing his.

People are putting too much emphasis on two key things here: The fact that Amanda Nunes withdrew the day of the fight, and that she was “cleared” by a doctor.

It’s relatively easy to know when you should withdraw from a fight with a broken hand, and it’s the minute you see the X-ray. The rate at which your bones heal is fairly predictable. But if you’re sick, especially with an illness you’ve struggled with before, how do you know you won’t feel better tomorrow? Or at least better enough to fight? Maybe Nunes held onto that hope for too long, but if so I’m inclined to believe that it was because she really wanted to fight.

As for being cleared, according to Nunes and her camp that consisted of a doctor checking her blood and her hydration levels. People who’ve dealt with sinusitis say it sometimes takes weeks and multiple doctors to even get a correct diagnosis, so maybe it’s not the easiest thing to identify. Even then, it’s not like there’s some magic test doctors can perform to determine physical fight readiness. At best, all they can do is tell you when you absolutely shouldn’t compete. Even then people get cleared with broken bones and torn ligaments and facial lacerations that were very recently glued shut.

Could Nunes have fought sick? Probably. Would it have harmed her chances of winning? Almost certainly. By pulling out the day of the fight, she made some people mad at her. But how many of those people would have cared about her if she’d gone through with it and taken a career- and/or life-changing beating while she was already sick?

People want to compare it to other jobs, or even other pro sports. If a quarterback has the flu and still plays in the big game, for one thing, everybody knows and talks about it in advance. It’s also a shared decision with shared responsibility. He plays poorly? Hey, maybe the coach should have gone with the backup. And why didn’t the front office sign a better backup?

In fighting, you’re all alone. No one wants to hear your excuses afterward. And one fight can be the difference in hundreds of thousands of dollars in future earnings. So I don’t blame a fighter who looks out for herself. Who else in this sport will do it for her?

Preach, brother. When I hear that Justin Gaethje is targeted as a coach on an upcoming season of “The Ultimate Fighter,” all I hear is that I’ve got no chance of seeing him do the one thing I want to watch him do for at least a few months.

Even then, coaches on “TUF” don’t have the best track record of actually making it to the promised fight at the end. (Just ask last season’s coaches, Cody Garbrandt and T.J. Dillashaw, who were supposed to fight last weekend and didn’t.)

I’m sure that, especially with his fighting style, Gaethje could probably use a break to rest and recover. But I’m not particularly interested in watching the process unfold on reality TV.

According to the Nevada State Athletic Commission, the fighters on “Dana White’s Tuesday Night Contender Series” (note that it’s not the UFC, but DWTNCS LLC that’s the promoter of record) all got $5,000 to show and $5,000 to win.

That’s half the entry-level pay for many UFC fighters, but it’s still pretty competitive for what most of these fighters would make in smaller shows. As far as why they do it, obviously they’re hoping it will vault them into the UFC, and maybe even with a little extra push after we watched them cave in someone else’s nose at the job interview.

Competition between fight promotions is a good thing for fighters and fans. It leads to better products from both Bellator and the UFC, since they’re forced to up their game in the race against one another. It leads to better pay and treatment for fighters, as both fight promoters try to sign the fighters they want and keep the ones they already have. The only people it’s not good for are the executives who would rather make more for giving us less.

What’s different about the Gegard Mousasi signing is that it’s a fighter on the upswing leaving the UFC for what he perceives as a better deal with better treatment in Bellator. If that pays off – if two years from now you hear Mousasi raving about his Bellator life rather than ruefully regretting this decision – that will have an impact on other fighters.

The other piece of the puzzle is that at some point Bellator will reach a certain critical mass of fighters who matter. You get one or two big names, so what? Big fights require two big fighters. A few free agent signings mean nothing if you don’t have anyone worthwhile to match them up against.

But Bellator is gradually beefing up some of its key divisions now, and with fighters who can and will fight in multiple weight classes. That means matchups worth making and fights worth seeing. If the money’s right and the treatment is better, don’t be surprised if more fighters decide they might like to join that party.

Good question. Again, it depends what kind of hall of fame the UFC wants to have (and that decision is entirely left to the UFC at this point). As my podcast co-host Chad Dundas likes to frame it, it’s a question of whether you want to have an all-time greats hall of fame or just an awesome dudes (and dudettes) hall of fame.

If it’s the second one, then yes, Jim Miller gets in. He’s been an exciting, reliable workhorse for the UFC, and he’s had tons of memorable battles over many, many years.

But if this is just for the all-time greats? Sorry, but I don’t think so. Miller’s never held a UFC title or even challenged for one. The only other current UFC HOF member with a similar deal is Stephan Bonnar, and clearly he’s there just for one important fight. But who knows, maybe there’s still time for Miller to make his case on those grounds.

Ben Fowlkes is MMAjunkie and USA TODAY’s MMA columnist. Follow him on Twitter at @BenFowlkesMMA. Twitter Mailbag appears every Thursday on MMAjunkie.

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