So rather than accept the $8 million for a fight he probably would have won easily, Mayweather paid Top Rank $750,000 to get out of his contract and promote himself or, in his parlance, be his own boss.
It was a massive risk because it seemed to end any hope for a fight with De La Hoya, and most financial advisers would say it is better to earn $8 million than to spend $750,000.
A little over a decade later, though, Mayweather continues to cash in on that so-called risky bet.
Mayweather was great in the ring from his earliest days as a pro, but in the first 10 years of his career, “Pretty Boy” Floyd struggled to sell tickets and gain public acceptance.
An announced crowd of 5,123 showed up at the MGM Grand on March 18, 2000, to watch him take on Gregorio Vargas in what was his fifth defense of his WBC super featherweight title. The Los Angeles Times reported in its March 19, 2000, edition (without noting a source) that 1,500 of the tickets were complimentary.
Floyd Mayweather is on the cusp of breaking yet another record for a one-day haul. (AP)
In that same story, the Times reported Mayweather had declined a reported six-fight, $12.75 million contract extension offered by HBO.
A few months earlier, when talks of an extension were just beginning, then-HBO Sports president Seth Abraham proposed a four-fight, $5 million extension.
Mayweather told Abraham he’d one day become the first boxer to earn $100 million in a single night. He instantly sloughed off Abraham’s offer during a meeting in Abraham’s New York office as “slave wages.”
“The meeting started to get pretty heated and I sent everyone out of the room but Floyd and myself,” Abraham told Yahoo Sports. “I said to him, ‘Floyd, we have been paying you hundreds of thousands of dollars and now we’re offering to pay you millions of dollars. You have to explain to me how you can possibly turn that down.’ He said, ‘Seth, those are slave wages.’ I responded by saying, ‘Floyd, if those are slave wages, you’re going to have to show me the way to that plantation.’ ”
As the final seconds wound down in the Vargas bout, HBO Sports play-by-play man Jim Lampley referred to the bout “a test of [Mayweather’s] overall professionalism and a chance to show off all of his varied skills against a guy who knows how to fight.”
In response, ringside analyst Larry Merchant, one of the sport’s most astute observers, added, “Having said that, he doesn’t look like any $12 million fighter to me.”
That was the perception of boxing insiders at the time, that Mayweather’s view of his worth and reality were 180 degrees opposed.
And so, even after beating Vargas by a unanimous decision, Mayweather didn’t land the long-term HBO deal. An agreement was made with then-IBF 130-pound champion Diego Corrales to fight Mayweather and the winner would get the HBO deal.
Mayweather won the fight, scoring five knockdowns, stopping Corrales in the 10th and landed the lucrative TV deal.
The HBO deal doubled Mayweather’s per-fight paycheck, from an average of $1.25 million to $2.62 million. But Mayweather wasn’t satisfied.
He wanted to box De La Hoya, had since 1997 when he was just six months into his professional career. Fighting on the undercard of De La Hoya-Pernell Whitaker, in what was billed as a fight for pound-for-pound supremacy, Mayweather was asked after beating Bobby Giepert who he wanted to fight next.
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