GRAND RAPIDS — The question has come his way countless times in Theartha Mayweather’s life: In a fistic family, why didn’t he box?
Actually, he did, briefly.
It just wasn’t his thing.
Advertisement
“I spent a lifetime in my brothers’ shadows, in a sense, because I wasn’t all into boxing,” he said. “As I got older, I learned how to deal with it.”
Mayweather is the younger brother of Floyd Mayweather Sr., and the older brother of Roger and Jeff Mayweather.
“When we were youngsters, we all joked around, but we were all different,” he said. “As a kid, I was more a street person. Roger, he had the mean streak. Floyd, he didn’t go out looking for trouble, but when it came, he dealt with it. Jeff, he never had a mean bone in his body.”
Mayweather’s three brothers compiled an aggregate professional record of 119-29-6, with two world championships.
Theartha Mayweather’s own boxing experience consisted of three fights in the U.S. Army, which he did, “just as a pastime.”
Still, like everyone in his family, the 49-year-old factory worker — one of Bernice Mayweather’s nine children, including four sons, and three living daughters — often found himself defending the family’s boxing honor when outsiders challenged it.
“People used to come to me when they lost, or whatever, and talk about them, and it would hurt me. It was hard to accept,” Theartha Mayweather said. “As I grew older, I got to the point I would tell them, ‘People get whupped up every day. At least they get paid.’ “
