George Zimmerman is facing the fight of his life.
The former neighborhood watch captain, who was acquitted last July of murder in the shooting death of Trayvon Martin, has agreed to a charity boxing match, according to Radar Online.
“I’d love to tell you [the charity] but unfortunately there’s so much animosity still from people out there, that if I name the charity now they would get bombarded with negativity, so I’d rather not,” Zimmerman told RadarOnline.com. “I’ll leave it up to them to say if they want it to be publicized or not. But I will tell you that it’s an animal rescue.”
A source close to Zimmerman confirmed to The Daily Caller News Foundation that Zimmerman will enter the ring, with some of the proceeds of the fight set to go to charity.
Zimmerman said that a friend put him in touch with celebrity fight promoter Damon Feldman.
Feldman, who claims on Twitter that he does “all the fights with all the Celebrities you hear about,” has a sketchy history. In 2011 he pleaded “no contest” to fixing celebrity matches.
Feldman, who has brokered fights for celebrities such as Jose Canseco, Tonya Harding and Rodney King, was sentenced to two years probation and barred from promoting fights in Pennsylvania.
On his Twitter account, Feldman wrote that he’s received over 3,700 emails to the address fightgeorge@hotmail.com from volunteers who’d like to get a shot in the ring with Zimmerman. The bout is set to take place on March 1st and will air online and through Pay per View.
The hip hop artist The Game is among those volunteers. The rapper told TMZ.com “I would not be boxing for me. I’d be boxing for the legacy of Trayvon Martin and for his family.”
The Game, who has a tattoo of Martin on his leg, said that he would “definitely take pleasure” in knocking out Zimmerman.
“Boxing isn’t new to me,” Zimmerman told Radar Online. “It’s something I had picked up well before the incident and it’s something that I liked, I enjoyed, and I kept up with it and I was able to lose a tremendous amount of weight and get a healthy lifestyle,” he said.
Zimmerman’s hand-to-hand fighting ability was a central part of his defense. The former neighborhood watch captain contended that Martin had punched him in the face and then began slamming his head against the concrete. Zimmerman claimed he had no other choice to defend himself than to shoot Martin.
The owner of the gym where Zimmerman had trained before the February 26, 2012 shooting corroborated Zimmerman’s physical weakness. Adam Pollack, who owns Kokopelli’s Gym, testified that Zimmerman was “just physically soft” in terms of his fighting ability. He also said that Zimmerman’s fighting ability rated between a “1” or “1-point-5” on a scale of one to 10. (RELATED: Zimmerman’s MMA instructor says he was a lousy fighter)
Zimmerman has popped in and out of the public spotlight since his acquittal last July. He has been pulled over several times for various traffic infractions. And police have been involved in two domestic disputes — one involving Zimmerman and his estranged wife Shellie, and another involving his current girlfriend, Samantha Scheibe.
Zimmerman has also taken up painting and sold at least one of his works on eBay for around $100,000.
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