A sleepy Floyd Mayweather Jr. sat in a hotel ballroom surrounded by reporters, looking as if he had partied with Justin Bieber and Johnny Manziel the night before.
He had not.
Fresh off a late-night flight from his birthplace of Grand Rapids, Mich., where he visited his grandmother, Mayweather groggily started the five-city promotional tour for his welterweight championship rematch with Marcos Maidana on Sept. 13 at the MGM Grand Garden Arena, describing of all things his recent encounter with the merrymaking Manziel. The bout will take place on Showtime pay-per-view.
“He’s not that tall. He’s a cool guy,” Mayweather said of his time with the Cleveland Browns rookie quarterback and Bieber at a party in Beverly Hills. “He’s a cool dude. He doesn’t really say too much. All he do is sit back and look at me the whole time to see how we’re doing.”
It was one celebrity lounging with another. If Manziel represents a new kind of Kardashian-type personality in professional football, Mayweather likened the current age of boxing to “The Mayweather era.”
Although he strongly considered facing Maidana at Barclays Center in Brooklyn, calling it “always one of my goals” to fight in New York, Mayweather (46-0, 26 knockouts) ultimately settled on his current hometown of Las Vegas, where, ironically mixed-martial arts are legal, as opposed to New York where they are not. The topic of MMA was omnipresent on Monday because Mayweather repeatedly compared Maidana (35-4, 31 knockout) to an MMA fighter for the roughhouse tactics he used the first time they met on May 3, when Mayweather won a surprisingly tough majority decision.
“That’s the only thing that sets him apart,” Mayweather said of Maidana. “He wants to hold with one hand, he wants to elbow. My eye didn’t get a deep gash from a punch. I got a deep gash from a head butt. I mean low blows all night, 20 low blows. I mean, we can go on and on.”
Mayweather said he would prepare himself with an eye toward strength and conditioning to combat any potential horseplay.
“I’m going to do a lot more physical training for this fight because is it safe to say I’m not fighting a boxer?” Mayweather said. “I’m facing an MMA fighter.”
The verbal attacks escalated when the fighters decamped to the streets of Times Square, where a makeshift stage and catwalk as well as hundreds of screaming fans awaited them. There, Mayweather continued to harangue Maidana, putting a piece of paper down on the dais next to him and asking Maidana to sign his name and bet his purse on the fight’s outcome.
Maidana said he would accept the bet if Mayweather allowed him to wear the type of gloves he prefers. Mayweather didn’t seem to have a response, though he may have had some flashbacks.
The night before the first fight with Maidana, rumors circulated the bout was off over a disagreement over gloves. Mayweather had objected to a pair of gloves Maidana wanted to wear. Even when a replacement pair was found that were agreed upon by the Nevada State Athletic Commission, Mayweather complained, saying the gloves didn’t have enough padding in the knuckle area. The issue was resolved when Al Haymon, an advisor to both fighters, worked out an arrangement where Maidana would be paid an additional $1.5 million to wear the gloves Mayweather wanted, according to ESPN.com
On Monday, Maidana admitted he signed a contract to fight Mayweather again with the gloves issue unresolved because he feared losing the opportunity to fight him. Mayweather, somewhat cryptically, admitted the gloves issue could resurface again.
“I really can’t say,” he said, remarking on Maidana’s earlier assertion the gloves will not be an issue like they were for the first fight. “I mean last time out it’s the truth, we grabbed the gloves and it had no padding in it, at all.”
Asked if he would retaliate if Maidana fought dirty, Mayweather looked like he had been insulted.
“No,” he said. “I still have to be a gentleman at the end of the day. I have to carry myself like a true gentleman.”
