Sports
Floyd Mayweather’s Relationship with his ‘White Daddy’ is Complicated
In this April 2010, file photo, Floyd Mayweather Jr. poses for a photo during a news conference in Las Vegas. (AP Photo/Isaac Brekken, File)
(USA Today) – Don Hale chuckled when he recalled what Floyd Mayweather Jr. told him the boxer’s family members called Hale.
“His white daddy,” Hale said, and his relationship with the boxer remains a matter of intrigue more than two decades after it started.
As Mayweather prepares to fight Manny Pacquiao on May 2, Hale discussed the two years he spent with Mayweather during a pivotal time of the boxer’s amateur career. He also recalled early signs of what Mayweather has become, long before the boxer compiled a 47-0 record and earned more than $400 million.
“I don’t know if Floyd would want people to know this, but setting out, he wanted to be the bad guy,” Hale told USA TODAY Sports. “I remember when he was an amateur talking about he could be a Sugar Ray Leonard. He said, ‘I don’t want to be a Sugar Ray Leonard, I want to be the bad guy. People pay to see the bad guy.’
“He wasn’t that concerned what people thought because he thought that they would pay (to watch his fights).”
