Floyd Mayweather Jr. was standing with his arm around his father, effectively showing him off to Oscar De La Hoya and making it clear that Mayweather Sr. would be playing a role in preparing him for the mega fight on May 5th.
Mayweather Sr. trained De La Hoya before they split over his $2 million demand to train him to fight his son.
Mayweather told De La Hoya, “He may be in the corner, but not your corner”
The reunion actually occurred about a half hour earlier in a suite upstairs at the MGM Grand hotel-casino, where the two will meet in one of the most anticipated fights in years.
The two Mayweathers hugged, and it seemed like they had never missed a beat as they talked about boxing, De La Hoya’s new trainer, Freddie Roach, and a strategy for the fight.
“We have our ups and downs, but he’s still my father,” Mayweather said. “Someday my father will bury me or I may have to bury him.”
Unfortunately, Mayweather senior, was in prison on drug charges when his son won an Olympic medal in 1996, but he trained him much of his earlier career before sadly the two separated in a bitter and public feud. Mayweather Senior ended up training De La Hoya for his last series of fights, and De La Hoya vowed that he wouldn’t fight again if the trainer wasn’t in his corner.
However Mayweather Sr. demanded $2 million to train De La Hoya to fight his son, and De La Hoya said he believed his heart wasn’t in getting him in the best shape to beat the younger Mayweather. Therefore DLH hired Freddie Roach, a former fighter and respected trainer, to prepare him for the fight.
Mayweather Jr. has been trained by his uncle, Roger Mayweather, but he is in jail on domestic abuse charges though he is expected to be released before the fight.
“I’m really glad I can bring family together like it’s supposed to be,” De La Hoya said.
The latest episode in the soap opera that is the Mayweather family took place on the next-to-last stop of an 11-city tour to promote the fight. Tickets for the bout sold out within an hour last month, generating a reported $20 million gate.
Mayweather Sr., who described himself as “a former fighter and a poetry writer,” came equipped with a poem about Roach, and read it to a crowd of several hundred people in the casino lobby, much to his son’s delight.
Mayweather Jr., is undefeated and generally thought of as the best pound-for-pound boxer in the world. But he will be moving up to 154 pounds to challenge De La Hoya in a fight that could set records for a non-heavyweight bout.
“I can say this, that he is still my father,” Mayweather said. “If it comes down to us going to war, I’m going to ride with my father.”
How do you think that this will effect Mayweather’s chances of beating DLH?
Surely this makes Pretty Boy an even hotter favourite?
