by Geoffrey Ciani – This week’s edition of On the Ropes Boxing Radio featured an exclusive interview Floyd Mayweather Senior whose son recently scored an impressive one-sided victory against Sugar Shane Mosley. Rumors have recently been in circulation about a potential showdown in the fight everyone wants to see, and that of course is a fight between Floyd Mayweather Junior and Manny Pacquiao. Mayweather Senior discussed this possibility and here is some of what he had to say:
On Manny Pacquiao being named ‘Fighter of the Decade’ by the BWAA:
“That’s bullsh*t. It ain’t nothing but bullsh*t, that’s all it is. Like I said, that’s why boxing is going bad because of sh*t like that. Everybody knows this man isn’t f*cking boxer of the decade. He got his ass whopped by two fighters that nobody even knows the fighters that whopped his ass. Nobody even knows who whopped it. The couple of guys who whopped it, nobody even knows who the hell they are. How the hell can he be ‘Fighter of the Decade’? My son’s been fighting top class fighters and beat all their asses. He beat every one of them, and he got two or three losses on his record and he’s ‘Fighter of the Decade? How the hell can that be? It’s impossible. Whoever said that, they got to be dumb, stupid, and crazy. I don’t give a damn what writer, reporter, or whoever it may be—they’re dumb, stupid, and crazy as far as I’m concerned..”
On why he thinks Pacquiao was named ‘Fighter of the Decade’:
“It ain’t nothing but bullsh*t. Like I’m telling you, it ain’t nothing. It’s just some stuff they put in. Whoever they want to get in, that’s who they put in. They figure they are gonna make him big. One thing about it, they can’t downplay my son because my son’s the biggest fighter in boxing today. It ain’t even Pacquiao, so they can forget about it. How can it not be my son when my son beats all the top fighters and plus, he was ready to fight Pacquiao and Pacquiao evidently don’t want to fight him because he ain’t taking no tests. Now that’s the problem right there.”
On whether he thinks his son has to fight Pacquiao just to silence his critics:
“He ain’t got nothing to prove! What does he got to prove? He whopped somebody Pacquiao didn’t want to fight. Pacquiao didn’t want to fight Shane Mosley and my son f*cking destroyed him! There really ain’t even nothing to talk about because my son has shut them all down and shut all their mouths, and their mouths should be shut because everything they said he can’t do he went and did. So that’s the ‘Fighter of the Decade’ right there.”
On rumors that a fight between Pacquiao and Mayweather will happen:
“It ain’t nothing but rumors. It ain’t nothing but rumors. Pacquiao don’t want to fight him. I know he don’t want to fight him. How’s he going to beat him? With his coach?”
On the Olympic style drug testing in a fight between his son and Pacquiao:
“ With Shane Mosley, Shane Mosley came clean. He did everything he was supposed to do just like my son asked. He did everything he was supposed to do, my son did everything he was supposed to do. He beat the sh*t out of Shane. That’s all we’re asking Pacquiao to do—come clean, and then we can do it. Come clean. Whatever it’s about, just come clean whatever it is. As long as you come clean, guess what? Everybody knows what’s going to happen”
On whether a fourteen day cutoff on the random Olympic style drug testing would be good enough:
“No, that ain’t good enough. No. It should be done random. When it’s done random, whenever they want to test Floyd they can test him; whenever they want to test Pacquiao, they can test him. Anybody can put something in their body and it’s going to work way before fourteen days. So that ain’t nothing but a bunch of garbage. What they’re doing, I know what happens—the whole thing is he really puts the stuff in him and turns into an animal and maybe pull something off with little Floyd where everybody goes, ‘Whoa! Pacquiao! Pacquiao!’ No, no, no, no. I wouldn’t even go for that, not at all. My son would be a fool if he does, and I don’t think he’s going to go for it, either, and he shouldn’t go for it.”
On claims made by his son that he might take another one or two years off from the sport:
“Oh hell no. It’s just talk, that’s all it is. No, that right there is not going to work right there and he knows that.”
On the claim he made last July that Shane Mosley posed the biggest threat to his son at that time:
“Like I told you, I didn’t change my mind. That was the biggest one I was telling you about then that I thought. The only thing he proposed is he hit my son in the second round. That’s the only thing he proposed and after that it was all downhill for him. Like I said before, then at that time, that was back awhile. That was before we knew about Pacquiao. That was before Pacquiao was coming up big like this. It was before Pacquiao came up beating up all these big guys in bigger weight classes—way bigger weight classes then him. That’s before Pacquiao started coming up and doing that—how did a guy do that, man? To beat all these big guys when other guys in the same division can’t beat them but little Pacquiao comes up there and beats them, and stops them and makes them quit, and makes them retreat, and give up, and make them say ‘No mas’, and all that. I don’t know how that is. How is that? How is that done?”
On who he believes poses the toughest challenge for his son right now:
“I can’t even tell you man, to be honest because my thing is, I really think to be honest that my son is the best fighter out there today. I don’t even see any threats no more.”
On why the fight between Pacquiao and his son could not happen the first time they entered negotiations:
“It didn’t not happen because of my son, though. My son was willing to fight him under the proper conditions on what they’re talking about making legal today. They’re talking about making that legal, that Olympic testing—and they should make it legal to stop all of this BS and this nonsense man, because boxing is going way, way in the opposite direction.”
On whether he believes boxing will suffer if a fight between Pacquiao and his son is not made:
“It’s going to suffer. Yes, it will suffer because of that because there ain’t no more name fighters, other than my son, to really even talk about to be for real. After my son lets the boxing game go, the game’s pretty much sliding unless they find someone real, real quick. It ain’t looking good for boxing.”
On why he thinks his son has looked more impressive in his last two outings:
“You know, it’s his skills and of course, his Daddy being around. Everything has something to do with it. It all had something to do with it. You saw that he did much better when I was there. So I’m just telling you that there’s a reason for it. There’s a reason for everything that happens. It’s really not hard to figure out. His Daddy was training him in the beginning. His Daddy was training him before he went to the Olympics. I’m the one who taught him how to fight, period. So why do you think he got better?”
On what fighters out there he believes he can improve as a trainer:
“Yes, I could make a lot of fighters. As a matter of fact, one I could make better is Pacquiao. Not that I necessarily want to train him, but I’m just saying that’s another one that I can make better. Just look at him. I can make him better with him just being Pacquiao by itself. With no nothing special just making him better—with him as a fighter himself and me. I’m just saying he could be a much better fighter. You got a lot of fighters out there who could be better fighters. They just don’t have the right people in the background. Some guys are fighting, they just don’t got the right teachers. Some guys can’t fight, and they got the right teachers. The right teachers just can’t get to them. So yes, a fighter you got to teach your fighter. There’s a difference between teaching and training. You have to teach. Teach is where you catch on. When you’re teaching a fighter, you teach him to jab first, right hand, hook, and after that everything else accumulates behind that. Once you get the fundamentals right, everything else follows.”
On who he believes are some of the other good boxing trainers in the sport today:
“A lot of these fighters, I don’t know. I can only say what I see and I will say one thing—Freddie Roach, they got him in the Hall of Fame and he should be in the ‘Hall of Shame’. You all know that. There’s so many other fighters. All the Mayweathers are the better trainers, anyway, then all the other fighters. We do have a few other trainers there that can train, but overall, the Mayweathers are the top of the line when it comes to trainers. You got me, Roger, and Jeff.”
On who he sees his son fighting next if the Pacquiao fight does not happen:
“Well you know, right now the only kind of person I can see fight with Floyd right now and give him some type of fight—but he won’t beat little Floyd—is that would be probably Paul Williams. Paul Williams is tall, lanky, but I haven’t really kept up with Paul Williams to be honest. I know little Floyd is faster, is smarter and that’s all you maybe need. It ain’t about how tall you are, you got to be smart. When you’re smart, those are the things that pay the bills. I don’t really think that Paul Williams will cause a major threat, but he’s the only one that I could see now. I thought Shane would do something before, but I guess as you see if he ain’t got nothing in him, if he ain’t got the enhancements and stuff in him, guess what? They can’t win. They can’t beat no damn body.”
On whether he believes Miguel Cotto would pose a challenge to Floyd Junior:
“As a matter of fact, when Cotto first started off last time I already thought the new Cotto was going to win so I didn’t really get into it because I felt Cotto was going to beat him anyway. It happened just like I thought. I think Cotto’s a good fighter as well. I think he needs to be tightened up more. I think Cotto could be a good fighter. Thing about all these guys, you got a kid coming up, Andre Berto, but he’s not at that level yet and probably never will be at that level because of the trainer that he has. A fighter’s got to have something, a trainer’s got to have something, but when you’re like a father and a son who both got it, that’s it.”
On whether he believes Floyd Junior has anything left to prove:
“There’s nothing else to prove. As a matter of fact, I hope he just goes and quits. For what? If you’re going to fight Pacquiao, fight Pacquiao and leave it alone. That should be the end of it. There’s nothing left to prove, he’s proved everything. You know what, and I can say this right here—my son is a hell of a fighter, he’s the best fighter today right now as we stand. As it continues, you could get your ass whopped just like Ali. You could end up being whopped by a Leon Spinks. All these people end up getting whopped by nobodies and my son’s only human. He’s the best fighter today but hey, the best fighter today could be the wrong fighter tomorrow. So what I’m trying to say is that what you’re doing now, take it and run because he’s not going to stay in there like that because boxing is not like that. It’s a short game. It’s a good ten or fifteen years, period, and then you have to get out of it. You have to leave it alone. Little Floyd did very, very good and I think that right now he has nothing to prove to nobody. If you keep trying to prove yourself to somebody, all you’re going to prove is disaster for yourself. See as long as you keep fighting, there’s always going to be somebody out there who says he’s going to beat you. So the public will know that until you finally get your ass whopped and then, there it is. They ain’t gonna remember none of the fights that you won. They ain’t gonna remember nothing about the Pacquiaos, they ain’t gonna know nothing about Shane Mosley, they ain’t gonna know nothing about Genaro Hernandez, they ain’t going to know nothing about none of these fights. The only fight they’re going to remember is you got your ass kicked by so and so. That’s all they’re going to remember, believe me. At the end of the day, even though you’re a Hall of Famer they’re going to be a Hall of Shamer. That’s what it is. They force you into that by keep telling you. It’s time to get out and then just quit. The last fighter I think he should deal with right now with fighting is Pacquiao. Get it, and get out, and go out clean. Go out clean and nobody can say nothing. They can say what they want to say. It’s over. Ain’t nobody whopped me, it’s over. So I’m the best, and he can keep saying he’s the best by saying he’s better than Muhammad Ali, that he’s better than Sugar Ray Robinson, that he’s better than whoever. He has a right to say that because this is his era and his time and he’s beat everybody you put in front of him. So can’t nobody say, nobody can whop you unless they get in there and do that and there ain’t nobody who did that. So as far as I’m concerned, he’s the best and he should feel the same way.”
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For those interested in listening to the Floyd Mayweather Senior interview in its entirety, it begins approximately twenty-two minutes into the show.
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