DID I ever tell you about the time I didn’t interview Floyd Mayweather? It was not as disappointing as the time I didn’t interview John F Kennedy. Stood on a grassy knoll for three hours without joy for that one.
The deal was that Floyd was going to phone me at 3pm on a Tuesday afternoon. From the off, I had my doubts. The notion was slightly absurd. The best, richest, most celebrated boxer of his generation wakes up in Las Vegas, scratches his perfectly formed toosh and says: “Hey, whatever I am going to do, I am going to phone that dude in Glass Go with the Daily Herald Globe.”
Still, I cleared the decks. I cancelled the Dial a Bus to the bingo, broke the news to Kylie that our lambada class was cancelled, found a mop to clear up her tears, and learned how to answer a smart phone. Difficult morning.
Floyd, of course, did not phone. Indeed, it is now 10 days later and he still has not phoned. I am beginning to think it might not happen.
But they do not call me the Newshound of The Herald for nothing. I have to pay them. However, I am not a man to let go, as the sports editor can attest. My nail marks are still on his desk after he tried to remove me from his office and the building with the help of four security staff, a tow rope and a tractor.
However, I can reveal, dear reader, that I interviewed Floyd in person. The occasion was an audience he granted to hundreds of punters at an hotel in Glasgow.
Me and Ally, my son and designated carer, sat at our table and were frankly astonished as Mayweather, who has won 12 world titles in four divisions and retired unbeaten after 49 pro fights, proceeded to tell Johnny Nelson, the erstwhile cruiserweight champion, something of life as the most gaudy, most outspoken most downright flashy boxer of this millennium.
The backstory to Mayweather can be summarised by saying his childhood made Oliver Twist look like a pampered public school boy and his adulthood has contained more scandals than the bumper book of News of the World front pages. He has beaten everyone in the ring and earned justifiable infamy for felony assault charges on women. His childhood was lived in the shadow of drugs, his adult life has been lived in a glare of publicity that has exposed his boxing genius and his awful propensity for violence outside the ring.
“I don’t judge,” he told Nelson at one point. It was certainly a personal statement but it also served as advice to others, perhaps to those who have been dazzled by his boxing prowess but properly critical of his personal flaws. Whatever, this was an audience with Floyd and there was no doubt about who was the star and about the forces that shaped and directed his life.
His dad was a hustler, he said. He sold drugs and served time. His mother was barely mentioned but she has been described as a drug user. Mayweather lived with his grandmother and five others in a one-bedroom apartment. It was a boxing family and Floyd was already thinking of it as a career at the age of eight. Thirty years on, in a function room on the banks of the Clyde, he said simply of money: “No matter how you get it, you gotta go out and get it.” His nickname was once Pretty Boy but now it is Money. He has grossed roughly $1bn from pay for view fights. “I get seven figures a month in interest,” he says of the investments he has made with the help of his mate, Warren Buffett.
He needs it. Informed sources told me his entourage numbers 100. My disbelief at this assertion was diminished when Floyd told the audience he had his personal, full-time DJ.
He maintained, somewhat coyly, that he has retired. But the boxing world craves a Mayweather 50-0 record and there is no shortage of those who would want to share the ring with him. Floyd deals out the pain of defeat but that is accompanied by the sort of payday that is extraordinary even by modern standards. The presence of Mayweather in Glasgow may have been to publicise his forthcoming arrival in Europe as a promoter but there is more than an element of his luxuriating in his fame.
He is attuned to celebrity but also very good at being one. A line formed of generally hard-bitten punters who had paid the equivalent of a Chinese transfer fee to shake his hand and have a photograph taken to commemorate the event.
Mayweather was pleasant, even gracious, though there was the merest suspicion he was not quite fully attentive as the line stretched into the distance.
“Do you think Glasgow is a great city?” asked one punter, grasping his hand.
“Yes, thanks,” said Mayweather.
The guy in front of me asked: “Are you the best ever?”
“Yes, thanks,” said Mayweather.
It was my turn. “Would you accept an offer to replace Ronny Deila?” I asked.
“Yes, thanks,” said Mayweather.
It was not my longest interview. But, hey, it supplies a more than decent headline.
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