Festivities will commence shortly after the fight at a Sin City strip club Tucked away
in a corner of Floyd Mayweather’s changing room at the MGM Grand in Las
Vegas is a space reserved for a black Nike duffel bag that remains with
him at all times.
Safeguarded
by a member of the 38-year-old boxer’s extensive entourage, and
weighing in at around a stone, it’s used to transport the ‘bricks’ of
cash that he likes to plough through during the course of a typical day.
Staff call it the ‘pregnant duffel’, for a simple reason: it’s always bulging with money.
Tonight,
in advance of Mayweather’s long-awaited showdown with Manny Pacquiao,
that bag’s contents will include five shrink-wrapped bundles of $100
bills, each bundle worth some $50,000 — the equivalent of roughly
£31,250.
This
not-so-petty cash has been set aside to finance the first couple of
hours of what the famously brash fighter, who is undefeated in 47
professional bouts, confidently expects to be a raucous victory
celebration.
Festivities will commence shortly after tonight’s fight has finished, at one of Sin City’s many strip clubs.
Mayweather,
wearing one of his collection of gold and diamond watches, and dripping
with jewellery, will — he hopes — arrive in one of the hundred
supercars he has purchased from a single dealership since moving to Las
Vegas 18 years ago. (Only last week, he boasted of having just spent
$450,000 on a bespoke Mercedes, and a six-figure sum on a gold-plated
golf buggy as a birthday present for one of his infant sons).
Once
inside the strip club, where he’s expected to be joined by such friends
as singers Justin Bieber (who will carry his championship belt into the
ring before the fight) and Beyonce’s husband Jay-Z, he will doubtless
perform another favourite trick: throwing bundles of banknotes into the
air above the venue’s stage, in order to ‘make it rain’.
The
atmosphere, an insider was quoted saying, will be ‘wall-to-wall money
and strippers’. Local lap-dancers are expecting their biggest payday
since 2008, when Mayweather and a hip-hop artist called T.I. flew
hundreds of their peers to town for a ‘strip off’ competition, with a
$100,000 first prize.
So
it goes in the strange, vulgar world of an athlete who — thanks to
stratospheric talent, and a knack for self-promotion — has succeeded in
becoming the world’s highest-earning sportsman, according to Forbes
magazine, with an estimated $400 million fortune and earnings that last
year topped $105 million.
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Mayweather (left) will take on Manny Pacquiao (right) in tonight's long-awaited showdown
Tonight,
win or lose, he will in roughly 45 minutes of action add around $200
million to that pot, taking 60 per cent of the $300 million purse. His
opponent Pacquiao, who was also born into abject poverty, and has lost
just five of his 64 professional fights, will bank the remainder.
The
gargantuan purse makes this the single most lucrative fight in history
(little wonder that Mayweather revels in the nickname ‘money’). And its
commercial appeal lies squarely in the way that both men have, in very
different ways, achieved a sort of celebrity that transcends sport.
Mayweather’s take on fame is perhaps best summed up in a self-portrait he uploaded to his Twitter feed in early January.
Shot
on an airport runway, it showed the boxer standing casually on the
tarmac, next to his private jet and no fewer than seven of his
supercars, worth a cool $15 million. ‘Welcome to my world,’ read the
caption.
The
boxer — raised in a Michigan slum by Floyd Snr, a former boxer turned
drug dealer — has, when he’s not fighting, devoted recent years almost
entirely to conspicuous consumption, much of it shared on social media,
or recorded by TV cameras.
This is the American dream - who doesn't want to be rich?
He
has an entourage, a harem of lady friends, and an appetite for luxury
that might have made Marie Antoinette blush. Dividing his time between a
vast home called ‘Bad Boy Mansion’ in Las Vegas and a compound in
Miami, he shuttles between the two in not one, but two private jets,
each worth around $40 million.
One
is a Gulfstream V that he and his family use; the other, a Gulfstream 4
for his entourage, whom he calls The Money Team and includes, on the
payroll, several bodyguards, two full-time masseurs, an attendant
employed to carry his hand-sanitiser (he has a phobia of germs), and a
personal barber.
This last employee may not have the most arduous of jobs: for several years, Mayweather’s head has always been clean-shaven.
On
the clothing front, the boxer is famed for wearing his designer
underpants only once, after which each pair is binned. It’s a similar
story for his shoes, including $3,000 pairs of red-soled Christian
Louboutin trainers. He sometimes leaves suitcases full of them behind in
hotel rooms as tips for the maid.
Buying
jewellery is another costly hobby. He once spent $6 million on gold and
diamond accessories in a single store in New York. Twice last year, he
spent six-figure sums on new watches for his 14-year-old daughter,
Lyanna. She share pictures of them on Twitter, noting: ‘Time is money so
my Daddy went and bought me a Rolex.’
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Mayweather’s take on fame is perhaps
best summed up in a self-portrait he uploaded to his Twitter feed in
early January, which showed off his eight supercars
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Tucked away in a corner of
Mayweather’s changing room at the MGM Grand (above) in Las Vegas, where
tonight's fight is taking place, is a space reserved for a black Nike
duffel bag filled with his cash
During
another million-dollar shopping trip, in 2013, Mayweather was
accompanied by a journalist who asked about his shopping habit. In
response, the fighter removed a bank statement from his pocket.
It
showed how much cash he had sitting in a current account, earning
almost no interest: a cool $123 million. ‘One account, baby!’ he said.
Some
of that money is spent at the gaming tables. In Las Vegas, he plays
blackjack for $100,000 a hand, and recently tweeted a picture of a
betting slip showing that he’d bet $1.4 million on the outcome of a
single American Football game.
‘The
last time I checked, this is what the American dream is,’ he said. ‘Who
doesn’t want to be rich and make this kind of money?’
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