The Unfamiliar Mayweather: Forged From A Different Cloth

Published

9 years ago

March 31, 2016

By Arne K. Lang

The name Mayweather is synonymous with boxing. For many people, the name is also synonymous with bad behavior. Brothers Floyd and Roger Mayweather and Floyd’s famous son of the same name have all had well-documented legal troubles. It’s fair to say that some folks, if asked to pick one word to characterize all the Mayweather men, would check the box marked “thug.”

If they knew Jeff Mayweather, the least well-known of the fighting Mayweathers, they wouldn’t be so quick to seize upon that stereotype. Jeff Mayweather isn’t loud or profane, doesn’t go out clubbing, has never threatened a woman with bodily harm, doesn’t make a spectacle of counting his money, and likely has never raised his fists to anyone outside the ring. He’s low-key, approachable and pleasant.

Jeff Mayweather is the baby of the bunch, twelve years younger than Floyd the Elder and three years younger than Roger. When Jeff launched his pro career, Floyd was retired and Roger, with 35 pro fights under his belt, was the reigning WBC 140-pound champion.

Compared with his siblings, Jeff was slow to get started. He was 10 weeks shy of his 24^th birthday when he made his pro debut on April 23, 1988. Boxing at the professional level stayed on the backburner until he finished college. At Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo, roughly 50 miles from his home in Grand Rapids, Jeff majored in graphic arts.

Jeff Mayweather brought a 23-2-2 record into his biggest payday, an 8-round contest with budding superstar Oscar De La Hoya. The Golden Boy was too good for him – the fight was stopped in the fourth round – but the match gave the three Mayweather brothers an odd distinction. Floyd and Roger had also fought an Olympic gold medalist. Floyd fought Sugar Ray Leonard; Roger fought Pernell Whitaker. Jeff lost the fight but completed the hat trick.

Jeff’s career sputtered after the loss to De La Hoya. He came up short in 12 round tussles with hometown favorites Joey Gamache and Israel Cardona and finished with a mark of 32-10-5. But unlike most fighters, including most great fighters, he left the sport on a winning note.

Jeff knew going into his match with Eric Jakubowski on March 12, 1997, that this would be his final bout. The match was staged in Grand Rapids on a card that featured his brother Roger in the main event and included his nephew Little Floyd whose career was just getting started (Little Floyd, as he was commonly referenced back then, turns 40 next year).

Jeff judged that this was the perfect setting for his farewell fight. He was back in his hometown, where he had never boxed professionally. Sharing the bill with two members of his family made the event extra-special.

Jeff was a reluctant warrior. Had he been the oldest brother, we wouldn’t be having this conversation. Before he turned pro at the age of 20, Roger Mayweather was an outstanding amateur. Tagging along with Roger to the gym, it was inevitable that Jeff would be goaded into giving boxing a whirl.

Jeff willingly acknowledges that he didn’t have the drive to be special that is the hallmark of all great champions. Don’t misunderstand. He was always in shape. He competed in the 132-pound division in the 1997 National Golden Gloves Tournament and as a pro he never weighed more than 139 ½ pounds. But there wasn’t the same passion for boxing that he saw in others.

“Things came too easy for me,” says Jeff. “I was good at school and I had no fears that things would be hard for me if boxing didn’t work out.”

As an amateur, Jeff crossed paths with several boxers who made quick headway as professionals – boxers that didn’t strike him as exceptional. As he watched their careers blossom, Jeff reconsidered his decision to forego boxing for a career in the graphic arts. “I wasn’t 100 percent committed to boxing,” he says, “but I knew that if I was going to give it a shot I couldn’t wait any longer.”

Transitioning from boxing to training boxers was a seamless transition. Jeff’s older brothers, to use a basketball analogy, were gym rats. Roger was forever mentoring aspiring boxers even as his career was still ongoing. Jeff upheld the family tradition.

On July 28, 2006, Sultan Ibragimov, an undefeated heavyweight from Russia, met Ray Austin at the Seminole Hard Rock Hotel in Hollywood, Florida. Ibragimov’s cornermen were old salts Panama Lewis and Stacey McKinley. Austin’s cornermen, Jeff Mayweather and Shannon Briggs (yes, that Shannon Briggs), were greenhorns by comparison.

Ibragimov had advanced to the gold medal round in the 2000 Sydney Olympics where he lost a controversial decision to Cuban amateur legend Felix Savon. Expected to have little difficulty with Austin, he was fortunate to escape with a draw.

Ibragimov’s wealthy backer was none too pleased and made it known that he was in the market for a new head trainer. He auditioned five applicants before settling on Jeff.

A trimmed-down Ibragimov won his next three fights, blowing away Javier Mora in the opening round and then out-pointing Shannon Briggs and Evander Holyfield without too much difficulty. “Up-and-coming trainer Jeff Mayweather appeared to mold Ibragimov out of putty, creating a well-rounded boxer out of a brawler,” said Associated Press boxing writer Dave Skretta in his recap of the Briggs fight.

“He and I had the same temperament,” says Mayweather of Ibragimov, “and that made for good chemistry.” It helped that the Russian was fluent in English.

The final Ibragimov-Mayweather collaboration ended on a dispiriting note. On Feb. 23, 2008 at Madison Square Garden, Ibragimov failed to unseat heavyweight champion Wladimir Klitschko, losing a 12-round decision. He never fought again, but Mayweather would soon have another champion under his wing in Panamanian featherweight Celestino Caballero. (Jeff has also tutored a few MMA fighters, notably Muhammad “King Mo” Lawal. “A lot of MMA trainers don’t know enough about the science of boxing,” he says.)

Little Floyd’s life outside the ring has been a soap opera and Uncle Jeff has played a supporting role. “For nine years there was silence between us,” he says without elaborating on what caused the rift. “But through it all, I always prayed that my nephew would win all of his fights.”

A larger rift developed between Little Floyd and his father, but that too would be patched up. Jeff has written for boxing web sites and believes that one of his articles quickened the healing process. “I mentioned that all this animosity was killing our mother, Floyd’s grandmother,” says Jeff, looking back at those troublesome days.

Asked to name his favorite active fighter, Jeff tabs Kevin Newman II who has won five straight in the super middleweight class since being held to a draw in his first pro bout. Jeff, who has no children, considers Newman his adopted son. He has been schooling him since the young man was nine years old.

Nowadays, folks meeting Jeff for the first time have a stock question for him. They want to know if his famous nephew will come out of retirement and fight again. With one more win, Floyd Mayweather Jr will overtake the fabled Rocky Marciano who finished 49-0.

We would be remiss if we didn’t ask the same question. So tell us, Jeff, what do you think?

It so happens that he feels very strongly that his nephew will never fight again. “Floyd doesn’t need to beat Marciano’s record because he set a bunch of other records that will be even harder to beat,” says Jeff. “He was undefeated for 19 years as a pro. Who can top that?”

Some folks are willing to bet that Jeff is wrong. Time will tell.

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Arne K. Lang

TSS Salutes Thomas Hauser and his Bernie Award Cohorts

Published

2 days ago

April 16, 2025

TSS Press

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The Boxing Writers Association of America has announced the winners of its annual Bernie Awards competition. The awards, named in honor of former five-time BWAA president and frequent TSS contributor Bernard Fernandez, recognize outstanding writing in six categories as represented by stories published the previous year.

Over the years, this venerable website has produced a host of Bernie Award winners. In 2024, Thomas Hauser kept the tradition alive. A story by Hauser that appeared in these pages finished first in the category “Boxing News Story.” Titled “Ryan Garcia and the New York State Athletic Commission,” the story was published on June 23. You can read it HERE.

Hauser also finished first in the category of “Investigative Reporting” for “The Death of Ardi Ndembo,” a story that ran in the (London) Guardian. (Note: Hauser has owned this category. This is his 11^th first place finish for “Investigative Reporting”.)

Thomas Hauser, who entered the International Boxing Hall of Fame with the class of 2019, was honored at last year’s BWAA awards dinner with the A.J. Leibling Award for Outstanding Boxing Writing. The list of previous winners includes such noted authors as W.C. Heinz, Budd Schulberg, Pete Hamill, and George Plimpton, to name just a few.

The Leibling Award is now issued intermittently. The most recent honorees prior to Hauser were Joyce Carol Oates (2015) and Randy Roberts (2019).

Roberts, a Distinguished Professor of History at Purdue University, was tabbed to write the Hauser/Leibling Award story for the glossy magazine for BWAA members published in conjunction with the organization’s annual banquet. Regarding Hauser’s most well-known book, his Muhammad Ali biography, Roberts wrote, “It is nearly impossible to overestimate the importance of the book to our understanding of Ali and his times.” An earlier book by Hauser, “The Black Lights: Inside the World of Professional Boxing,” garnered this accolade: “Anyone who wants to understand boxing today should begin by reading ‘The Black Lights’.”

A panel of six judges determined the Bernie Award winners for stories published in 2024. The stories they evaluated were stripped of their bylines and other identifying marks including the publication or website for which the story was written.

Other winners:

Boxing Event Coverage: Tris Dixon

Boxing Column: Kieran Mulvaney

Boxing Feature (Over 1,500 Words): Lance Pugmire

Boxing Feature (Under 1,500 Words): Chris Mannix

The Dixon, Mulvaney, and Pugmire stories appeared in Boxing Scene; the Mannix story in Sports Illustrated.

The Bernie Award recipients will be honored at the forthcoming BWAA dinner on April 30 at the Edison Ballroom in the heart of Times Square. (For more information, visit the BWAA website). Two days after the dinner, an historic boxing tripleheader will be held in Times Square, the logistics of which should be quite interesting. Ryan Garcia, Devin Haney, and Teofimo Lopez share top billing.

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Mekhrubon Sanginov, whose Heroism Nearly Proved Fatal, Returns on Saturday

Published

3 days ago

April 15, 2025

Arne K. Lang

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To say that Mekhrubon Sanginov is excited to resume his boxing career would be a great understatement. Sanginov, ranked #9 by the WBA at 154 pounds before his hiatus, last fought on July 8, 2022.

He was in great form before his extended leave, having scored four straight fast knockouts, advancing his record to 13-0-1. Had he remained in Las Vegas, where he had settled after his fifth pro fight, his career may have continued on an upward trajectory, but a trip to his hometown of Dushanbe, Tajikistan, turned everything haywire. A run-in with a knife-wielding bully nearly cost him his life, stalling his career for nearly three full years.

Sanginov was exiting a restaurant in Dushanbe when he saw a man, plainly intoxicated, harassing another man, an innocent bystander. Mekhrubon intervened and was stabbed several times with a long knife. One of the puncture wounds came perilously close to puncturing his heart.

“After he stabbed me, I ran after him and hit him and caught him to hold for the police,” recollects Sanginov. “There was a lot of confusion when the police arrived. At first, the police were not certain what had happened.

“By the time I got to the hospital, I had lost two liters of blood, or so I was told. After I was patched up, one of the surgeons said to me, ‘Give thanks to God because he gave you a second life.’ It is like I was born a second time.”

“I was in the wrong place at the wrong time. It could have happened in any city,” he adds. (A story about the incident on another boxing site elicited this comment from a reader: “Good man right there. World would be a better place if more folk were willing to step up when it counts.”)

Sanginov first laced on a pair of gloves at age 10 and was purportedly 105-14 as an amateur. Growing up, the boxer he most admired was Roberto Duran. “Muhammad Ali will always be the greatest and [Marvin] Hagler was great too, but Duran was always my favorite,” he says.

During his absence from the ring, Sanginov married a girl from Tajikistan and became a father. His son Makhmud was born in Las Vegas and has dual citizenship. “Ideally,” he says, “I would like to have three more children. Two more boys and the last one a daughter.”

He also put on a great deal of weight. When he returned to the gym, his trainer Bones Adams was looking at a cruiserweight. But gradually the weight came off – “I had to give up one of my hobbies; I love to eat,” he says – and he will be resuming his career at 154. “Although I am the same weight as before, I feel stronger now. Before I was more of a boy, now I am a full-grown man,” says Sanginov who turned 29 in February.

He has a lot of rust to shed. Because of all those early knockouts, he has answered the bell for only eight rounds in the last four years. Concordantly, his comeback fight on Saturday could be described as a soft re-awakening. Sanginov’s opponent Mahonri Montes, an 18-year pro from Mexico, has a decent record (36-10-2, 25 KOs) but has been relatively inactive and is only 1-3-1 in his last five. Their match at Thunder Studios in Long Beach, California, is slated for eight rounds.

On May 10, Ardreal Holmes (17-0) faces Erickson Lubin (26-2) on a ProBox card in Kissimmee, Florida. It’s an IBF super welterweight title eliminator, meaning that the winner (in theory) will proceed directly to a world title fight.

Sanginov will be watching closely. He and Holmes were scheduled to meet in March of 2022 in the main event of a ShoBox card on Showtime. That match fell out when Sanginov suffered an ankle injury in sparring.

If not for a twist of fate, that may have been Mekhrubon Sanginov in that IBF eliminator, rather than Ardreal Holmes. We will never know, but one thing we do know is that Mekhrubon’s world title aspirations were too strong to be ruined by a knife-wielding bully.

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Jaron ‘Boots’ Ennis Wins Welterweight Showdown in Atlantic City

Published

6 days ago

April 12, 2025

David A. Avila

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In the showdown between undefeated welterweight champions Jaron “Boots Ennis walked away with the victory by technical knockout over Eamantis Stanionis and the WBA and IBF titles on Saturday.

No doubt. Ennis was the superior fighter.

“He’s a great fighter. He’s a good guy,” said Ennis.

Philadelphia’s Ennis (34-0, 30 KOs) faced Lithuania’s Stanionis (15-1, 10 KOs) at demonstrated an overpowering southpaw and orthodox attack in front of a sold-out crowd at Boardwalk Hall in Atlantic City, New Jersey.

It might have been confusing but whether he was in a southpaw stance or not Ennis busted the body with power shots and jabbed away in a withering pace in the first two rounds.

Stanionis looked surprised when his counter shots seemed impotent.

In the third round the Lithuanian fighter who trains at the Wild Card Gym in Hollywood, began using a rocket jab to gain some semblance of control. Then he launched lead rights to the jaw of Ennis. Though Stanionis connected solidly, the Philly fighter was still standing and seemingly unfazed by the blows.

That was a bad sign for Stanionis.

Ennis returned to his lightning jabs and blows to the body and Stanionis continued his marauding style like a Sherman Tank looking to eventually run over his foe. He just couldn’t muster enough firepower.

In the fifth round Stanionis opened up with a powerful body attack and seemed to have Ennis in retreat. But the Philadelphia fighter opened up with a speedy combination that ended with blood dripping from the nose of Stanionis.

It was not looking optimistic for the Lithuanian fighter who had never lost.

Stanionis opened up the sixth round with a three-punch combination and Ennis met him with a combination of his own. Stanionis was suddenly in retreat and Ennis chased him like a leopard pouncing on prey. A lightning five-punch combination that included four consecutive uppercuts delivered Stanionis to the floor for the count. He got up and survived the rest of the round.

After returning shakily to his corner, the trainer whispered to him and then told the referee that they had surrendered.

Ennis jumped in happiness and now holds the WBA and IBF welterweight titles.

“I felt like I was getting in my groove. I had a dream I got a stoppage just like this,” said Ennis.

Stanionis looked like he could continue, but perhaps it was a wise move by his trainer. The Lithuanian fighter’s wife is expecting their first child at any moment.

Meanwhile, Ennis finally proved the expectations of greatness by experts. It was a thorough display of superiority over a very good champion.

“The biggest part was being myself and having a live body in front of me,” said Ennis. “I’m just getting started.”

Matchroom Boxing promoter Eddie Hearn was jubilant over the performance of the Philadelphia fighter.

“What a wonderful humble man. This is one of the finest fighters today. By far the best fighter in the division,” said Hearn. “You are witnessing true greatness.”

Other Bouts

Former featherweight world champion Raymond Ford (17-1-1, 8 KOs) showed that moving up in weight would not be a problem even against the rugged and taller Thomas Mattice (22-5-1, 17 KOs) in winning by a convincing unanimous decision.

The quicksilver southpaw Ford ravaged Mattice in the first round then basically cruised the remaining nine rounds like a jackhammer set on automatic. Four-punch combinations pummeled Mattice but never put him down.

“He was a smart veteran. He could take a hit,” said Ford.

Still, there was no doubt on who won the super featherweight contest. After 10 rounds all three judges gave Ford every round and scored it 100-90 for the New Jersey fighter who formerly held the WBA featherweight title which was wrested from him by Nick Ball.

Shakhram Giyasov (17-0, 10 KOs) made good on a promise to his departed daughter by knocking out Argentina’s Franco Ocampo (17-3, 8 KOs) in their welterweight battle.

Giyasov floored Ocampo in the first round with an overhand right but the Argentine fighter was able to recover and fight on for several more rounds.

In the fourth frame, Giyasov launched a lead right to the liver and collapsed Ocampo with the body shot for the count of 10 at 1:57 of the fourth round.

“I had a very hard camp because I lost my daughter,” Giyasov explained. “I promised I would be world champion.”

In his second pro fight Omari Jones (2-0) needed only seconds to disable William Jackson (13-6-2) with a counter right to the body for a knockout win. The former Olympic medalist was looking for rounds but reacted to his opponent’s actions.

“He was a veteran he came out strong,” said Jones who won a bronze medal in the 2024 Paris Olympics. “But I just stayed tight and I looked for the shot and I landed it.”

After a feint, Jackson attacked and was countered by a right to the rib cage and down he went for the count at 1:40 of the first round in the welterweight contest.

Photo credit: Matchroom

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