LAS VEGAS — Floyd Mayweather was ready for change and said so, targeting two of his most tenured and trusted employees.
Yet, when his May 2 fight with Manny Pacquiao was negotiated, Leonard Ellerbe remained CEO of Mayweather Promotions, and 85-year-old Rafael Garcia was called back to work as cut man, even after Mayweather said last fall that he was making changes.
“We say things that we don’t mean sometimes,” Mayweather said last week here. “Different days, we feel different ways.”
Mayweather last fall told FightHype.com, a website to which he commonly grants interviews, that he and Ellerbe were “outgrowing each other” and weren’t “on the same page mentally.”
The pound-for-pound king wasn’t happy with several elements of the promotion for his second fight in 2014 against Marcos Maidana, last Sept. 14, including ticket arrangements that had his daughter and the girl’s mother seated apart.
In the throes of upheaval, Ellerbe quietly continued representing Mayweather Promotions, shunning interview requests. He was not dismissed.
When Mayweather-Pacquiao was announced last month, Ellerbe took to Twitter with a pointed message: “Success is the best revenge.”
“I’m going to always love Leonard, and I’m going to always love Rafael Garcia,” Mayweather said. “But I just feel like it’s not about being selfish. It’s about us working together. We got to here working together, let’s continue to work together.” Leonard Ellerbe has remained on as CEO of Mayweather Promotions and even was in the ring taking a few body shots during Floyd’s training last week. Josh Slagter | MLive.com
Mayweather made a corner change for his second victory over Maidana, adding Bob Ware in Ellerbe’s place.
The makeup of Mayweather’s corner for his welterweight blockbuster against Pacquiao at MGM Grand Garden Arena has not been announced. But both Garcia and Ware said they are working under the belief that Garcia will serve as cutman and Ware’s specialty will be wrapping Mayweather’s hands. Until last year, Garcia did both jobs.
Floyd Mayweather Sr., who trains his son, was happy Garcia was called back to work, saying he and the cutman “are really, really tight.”
Mayweather Sr. also said after the Maidana fight that he liked Ware’s presence in the corner, and reiterated that last week, calling him “a young buck right here that’s up the stairs, down the stairs, and sometimes taking his time” to buy the fighter extra seconds at the bell.
If Roger Mayweather on the floor is the fourth face in the corner, with Garcia and Ware, “You’ve got everybody you need right there,” Floyd Mayweather Sr. said.
Despite the 47-0 Mayweather’s dissatisfaction with the Maidana promotion aside, he decided that making major changes in a successful franchise at its most important moment, in a megafight against the 57-5-2 Pacquiao, would be unnecessary turmoil.
“I don’t have to fight if I don’t want to,” he said. “I’m set for the rest of my life. I’ve made very, very smart investments. Like I say, I’m not perfect, I made mistakes early on, but I have the right team around me.”
