East Meets West Meets Mayweathers

He's the only man that can call undefeated five-division champion Floyd Mayweather Jr. "Lil Floyd" and not earn a busted lip for his effort.

Part of that privilege is owed to the fact that Floyd Mayweather Sr. is the father of the former pound-for-pound champion, the man who first put a pair of boxing gloves on those NASCAR fast hands and first nurtured his ability in the hurt business.

The rest is because the two don't speak.

No letters, no phone calls, no conversations. Not so much as a shared turkey leg and a football game for the better part of a decade, excluding a brief period in 2007 when their interests, and maybe emotions, were allied.

Their relationship may as well be quantum physics in boxing trunks. Even if you had all the facts in front of you – Floyd Sr's five-and-a-half year prison sentence on a drug offense, Jr. kicking his father out of a property he owned – you'd still need an advanced degree to make sense of it all.

"He's my son and I love him, but I ain't no way I'm putting up with his bulls---," Floyd Sr. says, frankly assessing their relationship. "It's my way or the high way and that's the way it is."

But for two men who don't talk, the Mayweathers sure seem to send a lot of smoke signals.

In the days leading up to Saturday's heavily anticipated bout between current pound-for-pound king Manny Pacquiao and Mayweather's pupil Ricky Hatton (9PM ET, HBO Pay-Per-View), the battle between East and West has been hijacked by the family at the center of the boxing world.


There's Floyd Sr., the trainer, and, thus far, star of the promotion. And son Floyd, whose rumored return to the ring has cast its shadow over this fight since it was booked.

Pappa Mayweather, in his second fight with Hatton, has gone after Pacquiao's long-time trainer Freddie Roach every time he's been within shouting range, which is often for a man with a yack pedigree and a set of pipes like Mayweather. Somewhere between verbal pugilism and pulling pig tails, Mayweather has called the three time trainer of the year the "Joke coach," the "cockroach," and words not suitable to print on a family Web site, even if the family were the Osbournes..

This isn't surprising, of course. Everything in boxing is scripted, so much so that scorecards should come with artistic impression as a category.

Neither Hatton nor Pacquiao are the type to disparage opponents; the roughest words they have exchanged with each other would make Ann Landers look like a street tough. Hatton has always been more keen of making fun of himself (and has a collection of "Ricky Fatton" t-shirts to prove it) while the soft-spoken Pacquiao chooses his words carefully like like he's verbally tip-toeing through broken glass.

So Mayweather Sr. has taken the role of instigator.

"If you can't see him," Hatton says admiringly of his trainer. "You can hear him."

On conference calls, press conferences, interviews and everything short of limericks on a bathroom stall, the two trainers have gone at it. If the fighters throw half as many punches as their trainers have exchanged, both would be finished before the national anthem.

But for Mayweather that's part of the job, even if it means turning the story of a fight into another chapter in Mayweathers' drama.

"A lot of people ask me what I'm doing, doing all the talking instead of fighters," Mayweather says. "They tell me that's not what trainers are supposed to do. But this is the new and improved."

And it's part of the personality.

If there was ever any such thing as modesty in the Mayweather family gene pool, it was long ago beaten pillar to post by bravado while charisma held its hands.

Floyd Jr. became the biggest star in boxing, matching sublime talent with superb showmanship to the point where he could, and did, wear pink boxing gloves and mink trunks and still made his opponent look like the foolish fellow in the ring.



Meanwhile Floyd Sr., who has trained champions Chad Dawson, Joan Guzman and Oscar De La Hoya, has become one of the sport's top trainers and certainly its most vocal. Senior's bravado is matched only by the five-foot trophy to be awarded to the best "pound-for-pound" trainer, a wood-and-brass metaphor that would seem wholly out of place if it weren't being promoted by a man who you're almost certain already has a 10-foot trophy case to hold it.

"Trust me," he says. "I got a place."

But there's a sense that a triumph here, even if he wouldn't acknowledge it, would be a win over Pacquiao and a victory in the one thing the feuding Mayweathers do have in common, the desire not to be Floyd Mayweather.

The other Floyd Mayweather.

That Mayweather now trains the last fighter his son beat, a fighter who know faces the man who holds the mythic pound-for-pound title his son relinquished, and the fighter who, in all likelihood, will earn a rematch with his son should he win, doesn't require a GPS system to move from dot to dot.

Even the mirror tells the tale of their undeniable similarity. Senior's face eerily mirrors his son's with a few more miles, perhaps a few more misdeeds, and certainly more punches to his boxer's nose than his son, the Pretty Boy, would have ever allowed, but it's all but impossible to see one and not the other.

So it seemed almost predictable as his father became the biggest story in boxing, son Floyd re-emerged from retirement and is now reportedly close to fighting Juan Manuel Marquez, another pound-for-pound contender who recently lost a close to decision to Pacquiao. Mayweather's reportedly free-spending lifestyle likely plays its part, but the timing of the announcements seems as blunt as a straight right to the noise.

No, the Mayweather don't talk to each other. But they sure as heck don't mind talking over each other.

Whether he'd train a fighter against his son is as murky as their relationship. Senior had the opportunity when Mayweather fought De La Hoya, but offered his services only at what seemed to be a self-sabatoging price tag of $2 million.

Should he train either party, or sit ring side on a ticket from De La Hoya, as he did at De La Hoya-Mayweather, the story is again about the Mayweathers, even in the shadow of boxing's biggest promotion of their year.

Some place both Floyds would likely agree it should be.