J. Prince on Being Floyd Mayweather's Manager

When boxing came along, boxing was my first love. I got distracted by the music game because of, I mean, by boxing because of the music game. I always wanted to be a boxer, but it wasn't any gyms in Fifth Ward. So I always said to myself, if I ever make it, I want to build a boxing gym, a recreation center in my hood. And that's what I'd done. And shortly after I'd done that, I had an opportunity to go in the gym and start watching the amateurs. And I just kind of fell in love with boxing all over again, which ultimately led me to pray for a champion. Everything I tried to accomplish in life always exercised prayer. It worked for me. So I prayed for a champion. And I set up a meeting with Mike Tyson in Las Vegas. And I went to Las Vegas. What year is this? This had to be 99 or 2000. So, you know, I knew a friend that knew Mike, and Mike, you know, accepted the invitation because he was familiar with my movement where Rapalae was concerned. And I flew out there with my focus on Mike. And man, I walked into him sparring. And I was like, you know, I was on cloud nine because I had never saw him, you know, in person sparring. It was always at a fight. And I walked in and he was throwing leather with another heavyweight. And I was like starstruck. And in the midst of watching this sparring, Floyd Mayweather came in the gym. And Floyd, you know, I didn't know who he was. He kept coming to me. Yo, Jay, yo, Jay. Man, I know, I know, I know about your group. You know, he's calling groups out. I'm like, oh, OK, thanks, bro. Thanks, bro. I'm zeroing back in on Mike. Boom, boom, boom. Floyd come over again. Yo, Jay, yo, Jay, yo, Jay. Man, I know about this group here, man. And Jay, if you want to do something later on, you know, this is my number. I'll come pick you up. I'm like, all right, brother. OK. Focus on Mike. I don't know who Floyd is, right? So afterwards, you know, me and Mike go to his house to have the meeting that I came to have, because my objective was to become his manager, to be on his management team. And he and I met for an hour. He got his ex-wife on the phone. And, you know, I was pretty much convinced I was on the team after the meeting and everything took place. And, you know, hung with him all night. The next day, I tried to reach Mike. And I couldn't reach Mike. And I was left with Floyd. And I asked my friend, I said, who number is this number right here? He said, oh, that's Floyd Mayweather, the 130-pound champion. So bam, a red light went off in my head because I prayed for a champion. Long story short, me and Floyd was in business together less than a week. That's crazy. I was his manager. You didn't even know who he was. I didn't know. No idea. That was when he was pretty boy Floyd. Yeah. Before Money Mayweather. Exactly. Yeah. He had a totally different style back then, too. He was much more aggressive. Went for the knockout war. Yeah, well, I think he used his legs a lot more then. But if he saw the opportunity, he definitely went in for the kill. But, you know, his whole image was different before I came about. Well, he had a lot of hand problems, right? Like he's had several hand breaks. Yeah, well, I don't know about a break, but I know we eventually had to get a specialist to wrap his hands because, you know, he would hurt him a lot. Yeah. And do you think that affected his style? Is that like because he developed a very defensive style as he got older? I think that's a part of confidence. I think that's a part of evolving as a fighter. You know, in the beginning, I think Florida uses legs much more. But as he evolved with experience, he got comfortable, you know, with shoulder roll and defense. Yeah. Greatest defense of all time. Oh, man. Of all time. Yeah, I agree. I had my friend Andrew Schultz on here yesterday. We were talking about him. We were like, he might have got hit hard four times in his career, which is insane. Yeah. 50 and 0 and got tagged four times, which is unthinkable. No, he is amazing. But his work ethic is amazing. You know, the guy got to work. You know, I've had opportunity to like witness a lot of fighters work at it. Andre Ward's and Floyd may well work at it because unlike any fighter ever saw. Yeah, you don't get there without it. Exactly. Because there's so many talented people. There's so many athletic people. There's so many fierce dudes. But to be a champion, you need everything. You need gifts. You need athletic gifts. You need a sharp mind. You need a passion for the technical aspects of the game. But you got to have that ethic. If you don't have that work ethic, you don't you never keep it going. You always fall short of your expectations. And without naming any names, we all know those champions that could have been great. But they got fat in between camps and they just never trained as hard as they should have. And I mean, some of the all time great suffered from it like Roberto Duran after he beat Sugar Ray Leonard. And Sugar Ray knew it, capitalized on it and forced a quick rematch when he knew that Duran was fat. Duran was partying and drinking and a guy like Floyd Mayweather never did that. No. Never got out of shape. Man, he would you know, Floyd was the type of fighter that would party with everybody. But no drinking, no smoking. He sit back and watch and observe the whole movement. I remember watching a video of him leaving a club in Vegas. It showed him at the club, hanging out with everybody, leaving the club at two in the morning running. Oh, yeah. We used to do that all the time. Yeah. Regular pants on. We would watch fights together. And right after the fight, he was ready to run. Yo, Jay, yo, ain't nobody gonna kiss me slipping. The only way they can beat you is catch you out of shape. They ain't gonna catch me slipping. Take off running down the strip. It's amazing. And having his brother or having having his uncle Roger and having his father, you know, two world class fighters and having grown up seeing these guys, seeing his his uncle when when Roger Mayweather was a champion, he had a vicious style. He was, you know, his right hand was a thing of beauty. I mean, people forgot. Like I was watching some Roger Mayweather fights the other day. And to have his father, a guy who, you know, gave Sugar Ray Leonard a hell of a fight. Yeah. There's so much talent, so much knowledge and understanding of boxing in that family to grow up with that. And to have that mindset like Floyd has where he's observing and watching everything, that dude just absorbed everything. Oh, yeah. And not only watching, he had to spar with Roger. So you talking about, you know, having to learn how to protect yourself against the best as a kid. So, you know, he had access to a lot of power and evidently, you know, there's no doubt about it. It benefited him in a major way. When you met Floyd, he was the 130 pound champion. And did you just immediately started working with him? Yeah, but it was a process. And it was it wasn't easy because I came into a situation where his father and his uncle was his manager. And I wasn't embraced, you know, with love, you know, because they kind of felt like I was imposing on a situation. He had a 12 million dollar contract on the table at the time I came in that everybody wanted him to sign. And Floyd called the contract a slave contract before I came. But they blamed me for him calling the contract a slave contract. So what was the provisions in the contract that he didn't like? Well, he just thought 12 million wasn't enough. You know what I mean? And, you know, ultimately I had to go in and do some damage control. And one of the things that I told him when, you know, when I met him, I said, if I can't make this better, I don't want to eat off your 12 million that already been offered to you. So I had opportunity to have a meeting with said Abraham, you know, at the time was the president of HBO. And I pretty much just asked the guy, you know, how could we get around this 12 million dollar contract? How can I make this a bigger contract? And at the time he told me about the fighter named Diego Corrales. He's like, you know, if you all would be willing to fight Diego Corrales, then this could jump up to 35 million or so if you all was able to beat Diego Corrales. And, you know, that was interesting to me. You know, I went home and done some due diligence on Diego Corrales at the time. And at that particular time, Diego had jumped on his ex-wife and kind of beat her up. He had charges, you know, kind of done her pretty bad, bad to the extent where he was facing jail time. And I saw that and I went back to Florida. I said, Florida, I said, it's a perfect time to fight Diego Corrales. I said, I even have a marketing tool. We can whip him for every battle woman in the United States of America. So he heard me out, but he wasn't embracing it. No, no, no, no, no, no, Jay. It ain't time to do that right now. No, no, no, no. So he didn't want to fight Diego because of Diego's skill set? Well, you know, I don't want to say Floyd was scared, but at the time, you know, everybody thought Diego could beat Floyd. He was like 30 and over 29 knockouts. Diego was a wild man. Yeah, Diego was. He was a knockout artist and he just felt like it wasn't the time I talked to him for like four hours and couldn't convince him. So I decided to go home and I went home about six in the morning and I woke up about 11 in the morning with a message from him. Yo, yo, Jay, I had you, you know, as my manager and you think I should fight him, I fight him. So it was then where, you know, I was celebrating. I'm like, whoa, we finna get Diego. So I call the people at HBO and they told me they didn't have a date. They wouldn't have a date to next year or something like that. And it was then I decided to use some of my record label talents. You know, I had to build my record company without having video, without having radio, you know, just pulling publicity stunts. So I told Florida, say, here's what we're going to do. Lennox Lewis and David tour was fighting at the at the Mandalay Bay. I say, during the press conference, I'm here in Diego's post coming to that fight. I say, during the press conference, we're going to surround Diego. My head home is to surround Diego. And I want you to come and just push him and we're going to stop the fight. Right. It ain't going to be no free fight, but you go and get your push in on him. We're going to stop it. We're going to steal the show. That was my objective. And that came to fruition. You know, we went and stole a show at the press conference. That was Saturday night Sunday. We was on the front page of the Las Vegas time. And, you know, Monday or Tuesday, I call them and they say, oh, we got a date for you. I love that you're telling me this because I always wonder. I always wonder when I see those kind of altercations, how many of those are coordinated by a wise man who understands publicity? Quite a few. Why wouldn't you? Yeah. Why wouldn't you? You know, it's marketing. Catch new episodes of the Joe Rogan experience for free only on Spotify. Watch back catalog JRE videos on Spotify, including clips, easily, seamlessly switch between video and audio experience on Spotify. You can listen to the JRE in the background while using other apps and can download episodes to save on data costs all for free. Spotify is absolutely free. You don't have to have a premium account to watch new JRE episodes. You just need to search for the JRE on your Spotify app. Go to Spotify now to get this full episode of the Joe Rogan experience.