As Mayweather stands outside the Mercedes now, his jaw set hard against the anger in his eyes, he can be excused if he doesn’t feel totally in control. It’s a troubling time for the 35-year-old boxer. He has been unable, after repeated attempts, to reach an agreement to fight Manny Pacquiao, in what could be the most lucrative matchup in boxing history. Instead, he is roughly five weeks away from facing Cotto and eight weeks from beginning a 90-day jail sentence for domestic violence against Josie Harris, the mother of three of his four children. The specter of those 90 days hangs over every early-evening workout, every seven-mile run down the Strip at 10 p.m. How will it tarnish his legacy? If past is prologue, not much. Mayweather has been mixed up in several violent incidents dating to 2002, when he pleaded guilty to misdemeanor battery after a fight with two women at a Vegas nightclub. None of it has affected his earning power. In the boxing business, fans don’t expect purity. And the economies of both Las Vegas and his sport need him desperately. Perhaps that’s why he was able to postpone his jail time until after the Cotto fight.
Control is no small concern. Mayweather’s engine runs on it, along with equal parts confidence, machismo and flamboyance. During one of his recent workouts (he’s known for his epic three-hour sessions), two long rows of folding metal chairs in the gym are filled. There are women in heels (stilts?) and painted-on clothes, children in shorts and tank tops, men who have somehow found their way into the inner circle. After a session on the mitts with his uncle Roger, the cheers reverberate from the margins of the ring. Floyd likes the gym hot, so the women are constantly fanning themselves or consciously not moving, anything to reduce the risk of having their makeup sweat down their necks. One of the women is Shantel Jackson, known as Miss Jackson. She is Floyd’s longtime fiancne. She’s wearing an engagement ring that has an 18-carat diamond with 10 one-carat diamonds dotting the shank. The main diamond is roughly the size of an unshelled walnut.
She’s not the only one who’s flashing. There’s the omnipresent 50 Cent, who says of his relationship with Floyd, “It works because neither of us needs anything from the other.” For Floyd’s 35th birthday, 50 — or “Five,” in Floydspeak — designed and commissioned an open-wheel Formula One car with a spaceship-style cockpit that seats two. Fifty claims it’s street legal; it’s preposterously cool. The cost: roughly $500,000.
Then there’s the biggest outlier in the gym today: a seaplane pilot who runs a fishing resort on Canada’s Andrew Lake, near the Northwest Territories. He winters in Vegas and spends most evenings sitting on the apron of one of the rings watching Floyd train. How he came to be here every day is unclear, even to him.
A member of Mayweather’s team confides conspiratorially: “All those people in the gym? Floyd takes care of almost every one of them in one way or another. He’s generous to a lot of people.”
Their job descriptions, however, are whatever he needs them to be at the moment, in any moment. His security crew routinely receives calls at 2 or 3 a.m. to accompany the nocturnal Mayweather to a local athletic club for weights and basketball. On this day, his regular workout finished, the champ tells one of his helpers to beckon two women from his entourage into his locker room. As he showers, he calls for one of them, a tall, dark-haired woman named Jamie, to soap his back while he continues to carry on an animated conversation with five or six men in the room. Dressed for the club, she complies while making it clear she will not get into the shower. It’s an uncomfortable moment, especially for Jamie, who goes about her work rather perfunctorily. To break the tension, 50 Cent summons his best Chris Rock.
“Damn,” he says. “The man needs a little help. You can’t trust nobody nowadays. What if something bad happens?” Who should be fired? That thought runs nonstop through Mayweather’s head as he watches the betting-slip seekers stumble around the parking lot outside the gym. Who? Not Dave, his main runner, because Dave is trustworthy and responsible. Floyd is kicking himself over the Dave thing, because none of this would have happened if he hadn’t been a good boss and let Dave leave early for the weekend (early in Floyd’s world: around 7 p.m.) to be with his family in Los Angeles. “I didn’t want him driving late,” Mayweather says. “See what happens?”
The car idles with a throaty purr. The lot resembles an anthill in a tornado: Everybody’s scrambling around trying to look busy, stopping occasionally to think ostentatiously, as if the spirit of the slip might divine itself onto their brains.
Mayweather keeps repeating the information as he knows it. Possession of The Bag went from Dave to Kip to Vito to Five-Three, or some variation thereof. He repeats the names in greater and greater volume as his anger rises. He’s got Dave on the car speaker while he talks to Five-Three, so named for the car number from his days as a driver for a New York City car service. Five-Three politely but forcefully tells Mayweather that he handed him the slip, along with his car keys, and that Mayweather put it in the pocket of one of the many sweatpants hanging in the locker room.
Mayweather doesn’t remember. He was busy at the time, talking about business, planning the rest of his night and occasionally walking out of the locker room to look at the Heat game on the television in the lobby to “check on my money.” All he knows is he’s wearing sweatpants and there’s no betting slip in the pockets. In fact, that’s all anybody needs to know.
The mood in the car is somber. Mayweather turns to 50 Cent and says, “Five, I think somebody stole the motherf–ing ticket.” He doesn’t want to believe it, but he’s left with no other choice. The money, nearly quadruple the U.S. median salary, is insignificant compared with the prospect of thievery. Thievery opens up possibilities no one wants to consider. Fifty, whose demeanor has not changed through the entire ordeal, turns his head slightly and says with languor, “I’ve seen stranger things.”
Mayweather’s brain, always active, goes into hyperdrive. He recounts the bag’s chain of custody one more time, from Dave to Kip to Vito to Five-Three, as if sheer repetition can solve the mystery. He sets up hypotheticals, saying, “If Five gives me a bag, I ain’t giving that bag to nobody else without asking Five for permission first.” He tells Tom, sitting directly behind him, to make a call and tell the three guys involved that they can’t come back to the gym until the slip is found.
“Okay, P,” Tom says, using a nickname that refers to the Pretty Boy days, and one reserved only for those on the inside of the inside. Tom makes the call, delivering the news with all the emotion of a guy ordering a pizza. Mayweather says he’s going to call the sportsbook and put a hold on the payout until the slip can be found, the same way someone might stop payment on a check. Fifty looks up from his phone and says: “Floyd, you don’t make that call. That’s not how it works. Have Dave call.”
Mayweather, agitated, agrees with 50 Cent but decides to let it simmer. “We’ll wait and see,” he says.