Conflict seems to find Floyd Mayweather Jr., even when he’s not fighting. Like today. Summer-like temps have made this mid-March afternoon feel like July, and only those closest to the man recognized as pugilism’s premier practitioner have permission to lounge inside his new, about-to-open boxing gym on Schiff Drive, which sits a stone’s throw east of the original Chinatown Plaza on Spring Mountain and Wynn roads. Outside there’s a sense of restrained excitement. Perhaps Mayweather will say or do something to add even more heat to the fire between him and boxing’s “Golden Boy,” Oscar De La Hoya. On May 5, these two vaunted, telegenic champions will meet in a prizefight billed as one of the biggest and richest in history.
Today is Mayweather’s media day, time for him to work out his body for the cameras (hitting the speed and heavy bags, jumping rope, doing sit-ups, shadow boxing) and to work his mouth for the reporters who’ve come here from all over the world. Likely because he believes his braggadocio but certainly because of the HBO crew taping a four-week reality show chronicling the fight’s build-up, Mayweather, when he arrives later, will be at his lippy best. Goading trainers to work him harder. Bragging about his fitness. Claiming he recently saw De La Hoya, a married father, at the Spearmint Rhino strip club. Talking about his plans for East LA’s favorite son come May 5—“I’m going to ice this motherf--ker, that’s on my life.” For now, though, he’s yet to show.
Meantime, a waist-high fence built in the shape of a square has created a Green Zone of sorts in front of his gym. No one enters but by permission of Camp Mayweather. Navigating it is no problem for the media folks. When someone pulls up in an SUV with tinted windows, they put down the free sandwiches and potato chips and ready their equipment. False alarm: It’s not Mayweather, but one of his boxers. The man of the hour himself arrives 15 minutes later in a chauffeured black Navigator that looks fresh off the showroom floor. Slightly smaller than his advertised 5 feet, 8 inches, svelte, with arms thickened by weight training and the muscled calves of a Clydesdale, he’s a walking pitchman for Michael Jordan’s Jumpman 23 apparel: dark blue jersey matched with baggy, dark blue shorts that droop below the knees. Mayweather smiles, poses for camera shots and video feeds, cuts a red ribbon christening his gym and heads inside for the next five hours, totally oblivious to the conflict raging outside.
Seems that fence has seriously restricted movement in the parking lot of this newish Chinatown strip mall. Asian tourists are griping. So, too, are motorists hoping for a straight shot through from Valley View to Wynn. Making walking/driving quarters even tighter are two vehicles (a van and a small moving truck), shrink-wrapped in images of Mayweather, parked outside the fence. Members of his clique loiter next to the vehicles, in the path of oncoming traffic. The parking lot has become a gauntlet. Not to be beaten, several perturbed tourists unhitch the interlocking pieces of the fence, removing an entire section on the west and east sides to create an unfettered path for pedestrians. And with that, they accomplish what boxing, familial conflicts and the criminal justice system haven’t: pinning a loss on Floyd Mayweather Jr.
•••••••
As late at the ’80s, boxing was a major American sport. Shown on television all the time, its top fighters—Ray “Boom Boom” Mancini, Sugar Ray Leonard—were household names whose championship bouts could rival the Grammys for star power. The Mancinis and Leonards were the last of the dying breed of boxers whose skills and personalities created their celebrity. Mike Tyson exploded that judge-me-by-my-ring-prowess paradigm. He added a circus-like, WWE veneer, racking up as many headlines outside the ring (failed marriage to Robin Givens, street fights, the 1993 rape conviction) as inside it. The sweet science’s transition from sport to spectacle was completed in 1997, when Tyson bit Evander Holyfield’s ears during a heavyweight title fight.
Floyd Mayweather Jr. came up during this painful period. With good looks, great talent and keen maturity—interviews of him as a preteen prodigy show an on-camera charisma—he was perfectly positioned to bring sexy back to boxing, to be the sport’s Tiger Woods, that singular athlete who could carry the mantle. All the tools were present. Pedigree: son of talented fighter and world-class trainer Floyd Mayweather Sr. Performance: three Golden Gloves national titles, an 84-6 amateur record and a bronze medal in the Olympics. Professional success: 37 wins against zero losses and world titles in four weight classes (130, 135, 140 and 147). He could’ve been a modern-day Sugar Ray.
De La Hoya stole that thunder. It’s his fights that have generated an estimated $500 million in pay-per-view, and he who’s become boxing’s biggest draw. And there’s little doubt that he’s the main attraction for May 5, the primary reason ticket prices range from $1,000 in the nosebleed section to ringside seats at $20,000 a person, for the biggest live gate in boxing history ($19 million) and for possibility of breaking the 2 million pay-per-view mark set by Tyson-Holyfield.
Meanwhile, Mayweather has become the man you love to hate, boxing’s version of Barry Bonds. Hyper-confident, blatantly flashy and a heckler extraordinaire. Before fighting Diego Corrales, he made light of his opponent’s spousal battery charge. He infamously kicked his father out of his Summerlin home. He called his $2 million-per-fight HBO contract “slave wages.”
As if to burnish that villainous persona, Mayweather added a series of legal missteps that threatened both his career and his freedom. 2002: pleaded guilty to two charges of misdemeanor domestic violence. 2004: convicted of misdemeanor battery of two women in a nightclub, ordered to undergo “impulse control” counseling and sentenced to a one-year suspended jail sentence. Same year: fined and ordered to perform community service for allegedly kicking a bouncer during a fight at a Grand Rapids bar. 2005: acquitted of assaulting Josie Harris, the mother of his three children, after she recanted on the witness stand; she called him a “teddy bear inside.”
Fortunately for Mayweather and the boxing world, while he was collecting charges and amassing court appearances, his ring skills peaked. Truth be told, at 30 years old, he’s probably the best he’s ever been.
•••••••
If anything, Mayweather is aware of his image. “I’m into selling tickets. I’m a businessman. One minute they want to label me the villain. Then when I say, Okay, I’m the villain, then they say, ‘Why do you want to be the villain?’ When I fought Zab Judah in Vegas, I was the good guy. But when I fought Gatti, I was the bad guy. If Oscar was to fight me in Grand Rapids, Michigan, I’d be the good guy.”
So the media—which he claims to love, saying it five times during his media day—bears blame for his image problems. The legal scrapes, well, he attributes to being “young, black and rich.”
“You’re a target,” he says, as if there exists a cabal whose purpose is to besmirch buppies. “Things happen. I don’t point fingers at nobody. Whatever happened, happens. God don’t make mistakes, and I have to deal with it. Look, man, I feed the homeless and the battered women and children in Grand Rapids. We get all four seasons in Grand Rapids, so we buy jackets and mittens for kids. We go to elementary schools. We do so many different things, but all people want to talk about is controversy. When someone sues Floyd or tries to take me to court, they put it on the front page. But when I go to schools and speak, they don’t put that on the front page.”
This is what you get from Floyd Mayweather Jr.: unvarnished truth sandwiched between spin. You don’t know where his ego begins and the true Floyd ends. Microphones and recorders thrust in his face, he glides through interviews for nearly 30 minutes. More questions come as he gets his hands wrapped and back massaged. In between, he tapes fight promos.
The HBO reality series presents additional sides of Floyd. Floyd the rich boy: his 12,000-square-foot house, his Bentleys and his celebrity friends, which include multiplatinum rapper 50 Cent, who’s going to lead him to the ring against De La Hoya. Floyd the funnyman: doing the electric slide during a break in training; clowning around. His family members say he’s making up for lost time since his childhood was spent inside a boxing gym. And Floyd the father: watching his kids work out.
Mouthy Mayweather dominates media day, though. According to him, De La Hoya doesn’t keep it real. De La Hoya wasn’t born with a silver spoon in his mouth. “He’s from East LA, man,” Mayweather yells. “Everybody knows my story: growing up with seven people in a one-bedroom house, my dad going to prison, my dad being shot in front of me, my mother on drugs, my grandmother struggling, cleaning offices, my mother working in a nursing home ... it makes me hungry. I won’t go back to that again.”
And he, not De La Hoya, should be lauded for his business instincts. He’s serious as all get-out, almost pleading for recognition. This, in spite of the fact that De La Hoya clearly has the superior entrepreneurial resume. De La Hoya is getting the bigger paycheck for this fight, has a successful boxing promotions company, is revamping large swaths of East Los Angeles through his real estate holdings and has made more impact in the music biz, winning a Latin Grammy. Mayweather’s plans for movies and music have yet to bear discernible fruit. No one’s going to mistake his record label, Philthy Rich—there are no platinum acts on the roster—with a hit factory.
Mayweather lives here but is under no illusions that Vegas isn’t De La Hoya country. If the fight is close, he expects the decision to go the house favorite. That’s why wants to “ice” De La Hoya. One member of his crew predicts Mayweather will do it in the first round. Another suggests he stretch the fight out to make it more interesting. The real money, the man says, is in the rematch: “Floyd could make $30 million.”
Mayweather’s is an insular camp, tightly knit, its members quickly closing ranks around its breadwinner. Most of them, he says, come from the ghetto and have made wrong turns in life. He’s helping them do something positive. Nearly everywhere he goes, he’s led/trailed/watched by three or four man-giants. They are always within choking range.
As Drew “Bundini” Brown was to Muhammad Ali—trainer, corner man and muse for the former heavyweight champ—so are Mayweather’s friends to him. They throw pronouncements like rabbit punches: “Greatest of all time.” “Pound for pound,” a reference to Mayweather being the best fighter on the planet. “He trains like he’s fighting King Kong.”
Mayweather feeds off of it, though his bragging lacks Ali’s flair. “Oh, you gettin’ tired?” he says, as if he’s talking to De La Hoya, and ripping blink-fast lefts and rights to the midsection of a guy wearing pads on his rib cage. There’s lots of cursing in a Mayweather camp, most of it from him. He talks a lot of shit.
“Let’s work,” he admonishes his uncle and trainer, two-time welterweight champ Roger Mayweather. Roger obliges, tossing mitted hands up high for Mayweather to hit, at his head for him to evade, at his arms for him to block and at his midsection for him to pick off and return fire. The bell rings. Time for a break. “It’s time to get to motherf--kin’ work. I don’t need no water.”
It’s the ego-driven Mayweather’s most convincing boast of the day.
•••••••
The TV inside the gym is tuned to CNN’s coverage of the Virginia Tech shooting, in which a gunman killed 32 people and wounded 17 before killing himself. One man whips out his cell phone and dials; his sister works at the school.
“The world is going crazy,” Roger Mayweather says.
Inside the gym, on workout bars next to the ring, is a familiar face. Floyd Sr., cap atop his flowing dreadlocks, is doing pull-ups. Hang, pull the chin up over the bar. Repeat. His son enters. They hug and share some words. Cameras capture the moment. The physical distance between them—mere feet—conveys a sense of detachment. They’ve since patched up their differences, but old wounds heal slowly.
Floyd Sr. trained De La Hoya. When the Golden Boy and the Pretty Boy signed to fight, father and son engaged in a media spat. Senior told the media that he taught junior “everything he knows, not everything I know.” Junior subsequently said Roger Mayweather was the best trainer in the world, an honorific once ascribed to Senior. In brief remarks, Floyd Jr. says things are fine between the two. “He’s my father, they have to be. Plus, I’m the one cutting all the checks, so what I say goes.”
For his part, Floyd Sr. seems to be adjusting to the juxtaposition of son calling the shots and dad obeying—though it’s unclear what “official” role he’ll play. Other than yelling out occasional instructions and making up Ali-styled raps about his son’s talent, dad’s impact is limited. “If Oscar fights Floyd’s fight, it’ll be easy. I know Oscar because I trained him. Even if I didn’t train him, it’d be easy to pick out his weaknesses. Oscar doesn’t have Floyd’s presence.”
Roger supervises the training and supplements his nephew’s shit-talking. When he feels a question is off-base or out of line—Who’d win between you and Floyd Jr.? Is it curtains if Floyd Jr. gets caught by Oscar’s powerful left hook? Can Floyd handle a really physical fight?—he’ll purse his lips, pause and shoot you a look. “If Oscar wants to win this fight, he’s going to have to be physical. But Floyd is ready for that. He’s been training for this all his life.”
Born in 1977 to Floyd Mayweather Sr., one half of the fearsome Mayweather brothers of Grand Rapids, Michigan—street fighters turned world-class boxers, Floyd Sr., who gave the legendary Sugar Ray Leonard all he could handle, and Roger, a two-time world welterweight championship—Floyd Jr. was destined to become prizefighter. Early pictures show father and son, Floyd Jr. about knee-high to his pops, at a heavy bag. Dad’s throwing a punch; little Floyd has on boxing gloves, mouth forming an O-shape, wide eyes fixed on the camera. Floyd Jr. says he first got in the ring, just messing around, at three or four years old. On the days his father wouldn’t take him to the gym, he cried. Mayweather weighed all of 64 pounds in his first official boxing match, in 1987 in Owosso, Michigan. He was 10 and knocked out his opponent in the first round. “I still have the trophy.”
Soon as the boy could walk, Floyd Sr. trained his son in the ways of a boxer. Little Floyd, as he calls him, jumped rope and learned to maneuver on the balls of his feet. Boxing was all he knew, all he’d be allowed to know. Floyd wasn’t able to eat lots of candy or party like the rest of the kids. Training was more important. He had a date with destiny. Floyd Sr. admits he was hard on his son. “I wanted him to succeed.” Floyd Jr. seems ambivalent: grateful for where he is but a bit disappointed in how he got there.
Roger Mayweather all but dismisses his nephew’s hard-luck tales. He didn’t grow up rough, he says, “we did.” He won’t speak on Floyd Jr.’s mistakes or frosty relationship with Floyd Sr. But he will go on about Oscar being the perfect foil for his nephew, how the Golden Boy fades in fights (a persistent knock since he gave away the Felix Trinidad bout by taking off the last three rounds), how Floyd Jr. is a boxing genius, how Floyd knows what to do to win.
That he does. He won Golden Gloves national titles and an Olympic medal. His last defeat was a controversial one-point loss in the semifinals of the 1996 Atlanta Olympics—he moved here a year earlier to train with Roger for the games. That loss motivated him to never want to leave any decision to the judges, as he did in each of his six amateur defeats. “I lost each of those fights by one point. A lot of times, I was upset when I lost,” Mayweather reveals, “but I didn’t shed tears in front of nobody because that hurt me to know that guys didn’t really beat me.”
•••••••
Bernice Mayweather is the matriarch of the Mayweather family (she has 17 grandchildren). They call her Madea, short for “mother dear.” The name also happens to be the title character in Tyler Perry’s successful plays and movies about a pistol-packin’, tell-it-like-it-is grandmother. Mom to three boys (Jeff, Roger and Floyd Sr.), she played a vital role in Floyd Jr.’s life. “We talk all the time, about once a month,” Bernice, 73, says over the phone from Grand Rapids.
Protective grandmother that she is, Bernice Mayweather says her grandson isn’t the villain he’s made out to be. She’s never cottoned to the media and certainly didn’t believe the relationship between her son and grandson—the two have openly feuded over the years—was as bad as advertised. “I talk to his dad every day. I know my own children better than anybody. I know about the relationships between them, and that’s all I’m going to say.”
“Look,” she says, “they talked about Jesus Christ. When they talk, I get a little stronger. I just encourage Floyd Jr. to pray. I don’t like what’s written in the media, but I learn to live with it. I’m a strong black lady.”
Melvin Atkins directs athletics for public schools in Grand Rapids and has known Floyd Jr. since he was 5 or 6. He won’t speak on Mayweather’s legal issues, other than to say he’s never seen that side of him and that his father’s and uncle’s legal scrapes—Floyd Sr. and Roger have been incarcerated; Roger recently served six months in the Clark County Detention Center for assault—weren’t a harbinger of things to come.
“Floyd was 5 or 6 when I met him in a barbershop,” he says. “The Mayweathers were famous for their boxing skills. I was talking to Floyd Sr. about whether there are any up-and-comers in Golden Gloves. He said his son was the next great fighter, a superstar. So I took an interest in him. I corrected his behavior when he did something wrong. When he was fighting in the Olympics, myself and an assistant superintendent were there. We acted like we were his bodyguards because he’d always dreamed of having bodyguards. He was just like any other kids: Sometimes he did mischievous things—horsing around—but nothing atypical. Floyd has done wonderful things for our system. Several years ago, he donated $50,000 to the athletic program. He’s funded events and given money to youth and talked to a number of church groups.”
At Ottawa Hills High School, Floyd put most of his energies into being the center of attention. He was in Camilla Carter’s 10th-grade physical-education class. “He was a good student who like to have fun. I never had any problems out of him.”
Their paths rarely crossed at Ottawa, so Melia Smith, who’s been at the school 31 years, says most of what she knows about Floyd has come about recently. “He remembered me more than I remembered him,” she says. A nondescript student then, he’s a hero now. During Floyd Mayweather Day, students showcased talents in the performing arts. Mayweather’s message that day: It’s not what you have but who you are.
In 13 years covering Mayweather, boxing analyst Al Bernstein says he’s known only the pleasant Floyd. “My general impression of him at the time, and for the most part, has been amiable. I know he’s had other issues in life. I haven’t done his fights on the kind of basis where I’ve been around him every fight, but have done interviews. He and I have had good conversations.”
Some portion of Mayweather’s bad-boy image, he says, is meant to build drama. But his confidence is real, Bernstein insists. So is the chip on his shoulder. Were he to beat Oscar and get all and become the greatest fighter of the last 25 years, Bernstein says, he might not be satisfied. “Floyd thrives on motivation.”
•••••••
Watching Floyd Mayweather Jr. train is a sight to behold. You see the cat-like reflexes that make him so hard to hit. It’s like he’s got Spidey Sense and he sees the punches before they’re coming. He looks directly into the HBO camera and blocks, with his arms, elbows and gloves, 16 punches. You see the lightning-quick punches that have floored Corrales. Mayweather never appears to need rest. Consensus among most boxing insiders is that this will be Mayweather’s toughest fight, even tougher than his first epic bout with Jose Luis Castillo, a rugged Mexican slugger who gave the Pretty Boy all he could handle. Oscar, the theory goes, brings Castillo’s strength and chin along with a left hook that’s recognized as one of the best in the game.
Mayweather appears unfazed.
“People are used to seeing me dominate, and if a guy hits me with a couple of big shots, they think he’s won the whole fight. I’m a champion. A fight is won in 12 rounds. I’m not Superman. Even with [my fight with] Zab Judah, you see he can win two or three rounds. If a fighter wins one or two rounds, that’s nothing. I know how to win. A guy who’s not a seasoned professional, when he gets hit with a big shot, he wants to immediately get some get-back. But me, I’m going to take my time and I’m going to get my get-back.”
•••••••
So who’s going to win the fight?
Bernice Mayweather: “The best man is going to win. I’m his grandmother, and I will leave it like that. I hope my grandson wins. I’ll be proud of him whether he wins or loses because he’s a part of me.”
Melvin Atkins: “It’ll be one-sided. Floyd was on the undercard of a Pernell Whitaker-Oscar De La Hoya fight. Oscar was in his prime and Pernell was on his way down and Oscar had a tough time hitting him. Floyd is great; his speed is unbelievable, and he’s hard to hit. I’ve been to all of his championship fights and have never seen Floyd lose. If he does lose, it wouldn’t hurt his legacy. How many did Muhammad Ali lose? How many times did the great Sugar Ray Robinson lose?”
Floyd Mayweather Sr.: “Little Floyd’s got a heart as big as the ocean. If Oscar wants to get beat, my son’s the man to see.”
Roger Mayweather: “Man, who you think?”
Al Bernstein: “He’s fantastic, one of the best of the last two decades. He needs a couple more megafights to seal his legacy. Beating De La Hoya is not a given. Wins over [Shane] Mosley, [Miguel] Cotto and [Antonio] Margarito would cement his legacy. In terms of skill, know that Jose Luis Castillo is one of the greatest fighters of his era, and Floyd beat him twice, though you could make a case for Castillo in the first fight. What gives this fight intrigue is that Oscar is the biggest, strongest fighter he’s ever faced. There’s a legitimate question of who’s going to win this fight.”
Floyd Jr.: He’s going to “ice this motherf--ker.”
•••••••
Mayweather is favored to beat De La Hoya. If he does so in spectacular fashion against a spirited Golden Boy, then he’ll have the universal recognition he craves. A victory loses its luster if De La Hoya looks old and weathered.
Winning would carry another set of burdens. Should he continue fighting, pundits worry about Mayweather’s motivation. Without a chip on his shoulder, without someone to hold a grudge against, would he still be the great Floyd Mayweather Jr., or an uninspired fighter who could be picked off by a hungry challenger? Don’t look for any clarity from Mayweather. He says this could very well be his last fight. His strength coach, Leonard Ellerbe, doubts it.
Says Bernstein: “A win would drive up his profile. He would slightly transcend the sport, but doing it on the level of De La Hoya would be tough because there are few fighters that have done that. Sugar Ray Leonard, Muhammad Ali and Rocky Marciano have done it, but Tyson and Evander Holyfield haven’t.”
But what if Mayweather loses? What happens to the ego? Remember, he used to cry after losses.
More than one boxing writer has said a loss could do Mayweather well. Such a humbling experience would make him hungrier, less egotistic but more dangerous. Mayweather is focused squarely on De La Hoya. And, in a candid moment, he acknowledges that he needs this fight and that his opponent deserves top billing: “I’m glad Oscar’s where’s he’s at because if he wasn’t, this fight wouldn’t be the biggest fight in boxing. Everybody’s entitled to say what they want to say. Anybody who’s ever said anything bad or written anything bad about Floyd Mayweather Jr., all I can say is, ‘God bless you.’”
It’s at this point—after he’s sweated through hours of training and still appears fresh—that Floyd Mayweather Jr. seems the least conflicted and most genuine he’s been in the past few days.
“I have a family and I have feelings, too,” he says. “The one thing people can’t take away from me is that I can fight.”