By GREG BISHOP, The New York Times
LAS VEGAS — The eccentric uncle reclines on a couch, shoes off, feet up. The father, once estranged from his famous son, naps in the corner. Children scurry around, boxing gloves covering their tiny hands.
This gym is the Mayweather family living room.
At the center stands Floyd Mayweather Jr., 33, the undefeated welterweight, perhaps boxing’s best current fighter, and certainly its most boastful and most polarizing. He owns a 17,000-square-foot house nearby, but for all the spoils, for the hundreds of millions earned, the gym is home. Always has been.
“This here is family,” said Deltricia Howard, his older sister. “One big, old family. One big, old, dysfunctional, crazy family.”
Most boxing gyms ooze character, years of sweat seeped into stained walls. This one is filled with characters — three generations of Mayweathers bound by boxing and family and supreme confidence.
Home is here, inside a strip mall, near a Baptist church and the Serenity Cafe, its name a stark contrast to the mood of the boxing brood nearby. Home is guarded by a beefy security team: seven men, zero necks. And home is hot, above 80 degrees, always.
Amid continual chatter, the loudest, boldest voice of all belongs to Mayweather, who knocked out 1,000 punches on the heavy bag in 90 seconds and still managed to provide commentary throughout as he trained last week for his fight next Saturday against Shane Mosley.
He sang along to hip-hop blaring from the speakers — “I’m amazing, yeah, I know that” — and fired salvos at Mosley between situps.
He preached the usual themes: He is the face of boxing, the talk of boxing, the greatest boxer ever. He is boxing.
“Floyd comes from a tight-knit family,” said Nate Jones, a training partner and longtime friend. “Everybody’s a little crazy. Everybody’s a little braggadocios. Everybody got confidence.”
At age 1, Mayweather learned how to walk and how to box. No one is sure exactly which came first. Floyd Mayweather Sr. used to hold his son near speed bags, and the boy took to punching anything in sight, including door knobs, backs of chairs and hanging plants.
There was a gym less than a block from his home in Grand Rapids, Mich., five houses down, turn right.
“He didn’t know what a gym was,” said Deborah Sinclair, his mother. “All he knew was that was home.”
Back then, everyone called him Little Floyd, and though he grew to hate that nickname, Mayweather struck confidants as a younger version of his current self. He was so hyperactive he was often booted from the local water park, so cocksure he practiced his signature while his sisters completed homework.
He was the middle child, a boy who brought home stray cats and dogs, who found comfort in being surrounded by familiar faces. On Sundays, his mother held parties, hosting 30 to 40 people. They sang karaoke and played spades and ate soul food. Always, the talk returned to boxing.
Mayweather’s father traces the family’s pugilistic pursuits to Danny Brown, a childhood classmate who “fired on me” in grade school. That led him, two brothers and three cousins to the gym, the first stitch in the family’s boxing cloth.
Theirs is a complicated, well-documented history. The senior Mayweather’s promising boxing career effectively ended with a 20-gauge shotgun blast to the leg as he held Little Floyd. He went to prison for cocaine trafficking.
“I was on my own at age 16,” Mayweather said.
His uncle Roger Mayweather had moved here in 1981, turned professional and won the first of two world championships 15 months later, fighting under the nickname Black Mamba. Had it not been for boxing, Uncle Roger predicted, he would have ended up in “hell or jail.” As is, he will face battery charges this summer in a Las Vegas courtroom, and not for the first time.
Not that the Mayweathers find any of this distracting.
“It’s all boxing, man,” Roger Mayweather said. “I love boxing. I knew I would do this since I was a kid.”
Floyd Mayweather Jr. installed his uncle as his trainer in 2000, and that led to some seven years of estrangement from his father, including one particularly tense moment when Mayweather evicted his father from his house. During that period, father and son kept tabs on each other, and recently, the senior Mayweather returned to the inner circle and the gym they all call home.
All this makes for a dizzying family dynamic to everyone except those involved. All the blows, inside the ring and out, the drama, even Floyd Mayweather Jr.’s time spent inside courtrooms — on charges of battery and domestic violence — have served to strengthen their resolve.
Friends say Mayweather functions best surrounded by family chaos, that he keeps close even those who no longer perform necessary functions. His childhood friend Roderick Braswell said Mayweather performed multiple roles, alternately an instigator and a peacekeeper, a provider and a disciplinarian. It is as if Mayweather is “10 different people,” Braswell said.
When Mayweather discusses family, he is reflective and soft spoken, far from the cocky Money Mayweather character he created.
Leonard Ellerbe, Mayweather’s adviser and best friend, said this was by design. As a boxer, Mayweather fights with precise, calculated movements, a master tactician. His inner circle functions the same way. Ellerbe, for instance, said he turned down 25 business propositions a day.
Through Mayweather’s rise — an 84-6 record as an amateur, 40 pro triumphs, his last loss at the Summer Olympics in Atlanta in 1996 — he brought family and friends along. When Jones fell into a depression after his boxing career ended, Mayweather hired him, helping Jones kick an alcohol addiction.
Ten years ago, Mayweather requested a meeting with Ross Greenburg, the president of HBO Sports. Only 23 then, Mayweather burst into a hotel suite in Las Vegas, entourage in tow, proclaiming he would become HBO’s next star; his family boxing’s first. On each promise, he delivered.
“I fight for my family,” Mayweather said. “I don’t have to respond to anything. I don’t have to shut anybody up.”
As the Mosley bout approaches, Mayweather seems more intense, focused and determined. The family dynamic also shifted recently, toward the unexpected — relative serenity in the Mayweather camp.
Mayweather’s father, once the demanding trainer who withheld sweets and forced his teenage son to turn small trees into firewood, remains proud of their collective work — “I believed it, he achieved it” — but has also found a different role, in the background, upon returning. He claims to have helped plot strategy when Mayweather came out of retirement to fight Juan Manuel Marquez in September.
The longer the senior Mayweather talks, the more he delves into his selling drugs, his shady past. But now, he said, “the good supersedes the bad” because “everything came out right at the end of the day, maybe not for me, but everything came out right.”
He added: “I would be lying to you to tell you I’m not happy to be back with my son. I love my son. That’s my blood. My blood runs deep.”
Floyd Mayweather Sr.’s relationship with his brother is improving, too. The family painted them as older men with health issues — Roger Mayweather is diabetic — who are softening with age. In a quiet moment at the gym last week, they sat on the ring’s edge, deep in conversation.
The dynamic could shift again tomorrow, of course, this being the Mayweathers preparing for a fight. Manny Pacquiao is suing for defamation. Mayweather’s undefeated record must be defended once again.
Back inside the family living room, Mayweather played with his four children. Roger’s young son worked the mitts, like Floyd Mayweather Sr. and his son some 30 years ago. His sisters swapped stories — Floyd once fought the oldest with a chair — on leather couches.
His mother surveyed this scene and said, “He wouldn’t know what to do without his family.”
After training, they lingered outside, telling jokes, arguing over the size of their respective biceps.
“I got one that’s chiseled!” the father shouted.
“I got one that’s carved!” his son responded, before jumping into his Ferrari and heading not toward home, but away from it.
A version of this article appeared in print on April 25, 2010, on page SP1 of the New York edition.
Source: nytimes.com
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