LAS VEGAS ? It?s 2:47 a.m. Thursday morning, maybe 66 hours from the richest fight of his career, and Floyd Mayweather is bouncing around the Girl Collection gentlemen?s club here.
All around him music booms and women dance and singles flitter through the air. Mayweather greets friends and checks in with management. This is his club. He bought it and opened it a few months back. It?s become a home away from home, including or even especially, during the grind of his final training camp, even here on fight week.
Some would wonder if hanging out in a gentlemen?s club into the wee hours of the morning is the best way to prepare for a fast approaching fight, but Mayweather laughs that off. He is, as a matter of point, 49-0 in his career heading into Saturday?s bout with Conor McGregor.
There is no one else on earth who knows more about not just what it takes to win, but to never lose.
?Nobody can beat me,? Mayweather says over the din of the club. ?Nobody can beat me.? Floyd Mayweather rarely does anything conventional. (AP Photo/John Locher) More
He points to his black T-shirt with ?TBE? (The Best Ever) emblazoned across it.
?I?m shredded under here.?
He?s been here all week, every night into every morning. And he promises to be back Thursday and, yes, even Friday, too, staying until maybe 5 a.m. on Saturday. The fight should begin about 9 p.m. local time that day.
?Of course I?ll be here on Friday,? Mayweather said. ?Come back and see me.?
He later pulls out his cell phone and shows video of a recent sparring session and some speed work, one more impressive than the next. He doesn?t drink and he doesn?t smoke, so why wouldn?t he come to the club? He trains late in the evening at his nearby Mayweather Boxing Club and then comes to unwind here in an industrial area just west of the Vegas Strip.
Otherwise, he says, he?d be home, sitting around and watching television ? ?The First 48,? ?Lockup,? maybe ?Forensic Files.? He?d much rather spend the time here, among the people. Soon Rick Ross? ?Trap, Trap, Trap? comes on, and Mayweather bobs and weaves and sings along. It?s fast approaching 4 a.m.
?I sleep nine or 10 hours,? Mayweather said. ?I sleep as long as I want to and then I get up and start my day. I let my body rest. I?m going to be in bed at five. So I?ll wake up at 1:30.?
?He?s so cool, isn?t he, at the strip club a couple days before the fight?? McGregor said earlier Wednesday when asked about Girl Collection, which Mayweather featured on the ?All Access? Showtime series to hype the fight. ?Who gives a bollocks, mate? I?d say the place stinks. Looking at it on ?All Access,? it stinks.
?No disrespect to the people who are in there,? McGregor noted.
The club is actually fairly high end. It isn?t huge, 7,000 square feet with just one stage, maybe a dozen tables and a 10-seat bar. There are various VIP and party rooms, though, and the plan is to expand the footprint.
Mayweather said he conceptualized it five years ago while serving a three-month stint in the nearby Clark County Detention Center for a misdemeanor domestic violence charge. Due to his celebrity, Mayweather was placed in solitary confinement. With 23 hours a day alone in a cell to think, he wound up drawing up how this club would work.
He pulls out his phone again and shows the notes that he sent to his lawyer, who typed them up. It contains details all the way down to the menu ? everything from spinach dip to filet mignon. Mayweather said his expertise is born from first-hand knowledge. He couldn?t count all the clubs he?d been to around the world. He saw this as not just a place to hang out, but a savvy investment into an extremely lucrative business, especially here in Vegas.
?Women will always be in style,? Mayweather said. ?A regular club, you have to keep renovating it and doing it over to bring people back. A strip club can stay the same forever. Men will always come because they are attracted to women.
