Floyd Mayweather is not often called Junior these days, which is a pleasing development for a 38-year-old father of four who is responsible for the financial well-being of an entire sport as well as his adopted city. (Even his publicist calls him “Mister” in public.)
From the garden of his echoing mansion beside the 13th fairway of a members’ only golf club – which he has never used – 12 miles south of Las Vegas, Mr Mayweather has a panoramic view of the city that he and Manny Pacquiao will enrich by hundreds of millions of dollars when they fight at the MGM Grand Arena on Saturday night.
Pacquiao’s promoter, Bob Arum, calls the unification bout for the three world welterweight belts the fighters share “the biggest event in the history of Las Vegas”, an assumption shared, it appears, by the 18,000 men and women from around the world who applied for media accreditation. If they all got in, they could fill the arena, with a 2,000 overspill.
For once Arum is not exaggerating – and the man who knows the numbers as well as the Harvard graduate and one-time legal confidant of the Kennedy administration is the fighter he once promoted, a high-school drop-out with rat cunning and a gift for making money.
Mayweather’s wealth is as precious to him as the warm, desert air he breaths in on his late-night runs through the lightly sleeping streets of Las Vegas. “Money’s not everything,” he says in a self-approved television documentary. “It’s the only thing.” Does he believe that? Probably not, even if everything he says and does screams: “Hell, yes!” For all his conspicuous showing off, he is also a quietly generous man, to the bookmakers and a range of good causes.
However, money – as he is colloquially known – has also become his drug, of that there is no question. He loves making it, spending it, giving it away and making it all over again.
Mayweather, who holds the WBC and WBA titles at 147lb and has ruled in four other weight classes without defeat in 18 years as a professional, takes for granted his status as a boxer. It is in the conspicuous flaunting of the fruits of his labours that one can get a read on the boxing businessman who craves not just respect but the most obvious American proof it: money.
Although he cites God repeatedly as the giver of his gifts, he worships mammon as enthusiastically as any high-roller in this centre of capitalistic excess. His instincts, born of childhood hardship and trauma as the son of drug-addicted parents in Grand Rapids, Michigan, might have subconsciously drawn him to live in the most garish temple of them all, where the high priests are casino owners and celebrities, intermingled as if in a rolling self-parody.
Maybe because he was on interview auto-pilot, he added that his priority now was not so much to establish his boxing credentials (as he considers those are secure) but to become, “the first fighter to ever make nine figures in one night”. It is as if his talent for fighting with gloves is merely a way to create financial, as well as sporting, history – and nearly half of it in Las Vegas, the last 10 of his fights played out in the same MGM ring.
Who else, as executive producer of his own TV script, would allow for public consumption interviews with the man who sold him the 100-plus luxury cars he has bought over the years, as well as the man who washes them? Their loyalty to him is complete. When he occasionally ventures into town, he takes as many as 50 disciples from The Money Team to Fatburgers on the Strip, or to the Ghostbar on the 55th floor at the top of the Ivory Tower in the Palms Casino.
When the American TV personality Katie Couric came to interview him recently at his downtown gym, Mayweather was visibly upset when told he would have to wait 40 minutes while the crew set up the lights and the cameras. He does not take direction.
That control freakery extended to the very making of this fight. While it is tiresome to re-examine in detail the twists and turns of negotiations that began in late 2009 and reached a high point of barely credible serendipity when the fighters met face to face for the first time at a basketball game in Miami in January, the central premise is reasonably established: it is happening only because Mayweather wants it to happen.
He knows how much boxing needs him because of his power to generate fabulous riches for everyone, even those tangentially connected with this extravaganza and possibly a reprise in September.
Wonderful a fighter as Pacquiao is, the man in charge is Mayweather. But the Filipino is in good company. On the Forbes rich list for the last financial year, the biggest earners in sport included Lewis Hamilton $32m ($3m of it endorsements), Novak Djokovic $33.1m ($21m), Gareth Bale $36.4m ($11m), Pacquiao $41.8m ($800,000), Rafael Nadal $44.5m ($30m), Roger Federer $56.2m ($52m), Tiger Woods $61.2m ($55m), Lionel Messi $64.7m ($23m), LeBron James $72.3m ($53m), Cristiano Ronaldo $80m ($28m) and, top of the pile, Mayweather who earned $105m (£69m) with the sweat of his brow and not a red cent from endorsements.
That zero is a stark reminder that neither he nor boxing cut it alongside the clean, glamour sports when the Mad Men sit down to target athletes for their clients. Fighters have to make the clicks at the box office.
Mayweather has worked harder in the gym than for any of his previous 47 bouts. Possibly as a consequence, he has treated his media obligations with almost tired indifference. He figures the fight is so big it does not need selling, a notion with which the executives at Showtime and HBO, the partnered broadcasters, might not agree. They will have wished for a louder, brasher push from him to squeeze every last dollar from the enterprise.
When selected media got to speak to Mayweather on Wednesday, it was not around a table as in the past but on the phone and we were advised to ring the guarded number five minutes early to ensure we did not miss out on the privilege of listening to the champion. He eventually came on the line 15 minutes late. We were told there were 200 writers waiting.
Asked if he were concerned that his legendary gambling might drain even his reserves, he said (twice, as he often does): “I’m blessed. I made some good investments. If I wanted to retire today, I could.” A local writer this week took an educated stab at how much Mayweather might earn in his career and came up with the conveniently eye-catching figure of $1billion. Crazy as it seems, it might not be far from the mark.
Yet this most fascinating of athletes is not just a world-class bread head. As the interview winds up, he adds an anecdote none of us had heard before, about a man who knew him long before he was ego-bendingly rich. “There’s this guy that I never talk about to anyone and he’s doing extremely badly right now, not financially but health-wise, a guy by the name of Frank Brown.
“I’ve known him since I was the age of three. He has supported me more than anyone. He has always said: ‘Floyd, one day you will be the best fighter in the world.’ He was always taking me to church, taking me through different activities. He was like a grandfather to me. He would drive anywhere [to fights]. It could be in Little Rock, Arkansas. He would drive from Grand Rapids, Michigan, to come support me. He would sit in the room with me and say prayers with me.”
The last Mayweather fight Brown attended was the one against Oscar De La Hoya eight years ago. “He eventually lost his memory, so he’s at an old folks’ home,” Mayweather said. “It really hurts but I love that guy so much. I think about him all the time.”
And with that Mr Mayweather put down the phone and went to the gym.
