The longer the most recent incarnation of Showtime’s All Access series goes, the more it drills the same salient points into the viewing audience’s collective head.
Floyd Mayweather Jr. doesn’t like Oscar De La Hoya. Oscar De La Hoya doesn’t like Floyd Mayweather.
And, this time around, Canelo Alvarez is the vehicle for the “Golden Boy’s” enmity.
“In boxing, no one stays undefeated,” De La Hoya said. “Floyd’s not 25 anymore. He’s not 30. He’s 37. When somebody picks at me and jabs at me, especially someone who I fought, yes I want you to lose. And when you do, I’m going to take a deep breath and say, ‘Finally.’”
Mayweather’s May 2007 fight kick-started the multi-part pre-fight documentary concept on another network, and “Money” was quick to remind the Showtime camera of the multiple fighters whom De La Hoya has promised to provide a “beat Mayweather” blueprint in subsequent matches.
None of whom, he reiterated, were successful.
“All these guys who he gave a blueprint to have all lost,” Mayweather said. “Ricky Hatton lost. Marquez lost. Shane Mosley lost. Ortiz and Robert Guerrero, they both lost. And now he’ll try to give Canelo a blueprint, and he will lose.”
Weight and See
Among the main takeaways of last week’s second episode was that Mayweather’s top business partner, Leonard Ellerbe, didn’t think much of what he insisted was the Alvarez management team’s concession to a 152-pound catch weight in order to get the fight made.
Of course, when words like “idiot” and “inept” are used as descriptions, the described might disagree.
Such was the case for Alvarez trainer Eddie Reynoso, who was shown reacting angrily, as he and his fighter watched a clip of Ellerbe’s rant on a tablet device.
“Leonard Ellerbe, he’s so smart,” Reynoso said. “He had the best fighter in the world move up five pounds. (Mayweather says) ‘Line them up, they can’t beat me.’ We’ll see.”
Alvarez himself, who’d not weighed in on the weight issue in two previous episodes, went as far as to call Ellerbe a liar for his catch weight insistence.
“That’s a complete lie,” he said. “They wanted me to drop the weight. They were the ones crying about the weight. They know it very well.”
Driving Mr. Mayweather
The five-division champion’s taste for the finer things in life has never been a secret, and his love of luxury vehicles plays a large role in his lifestyle.
Among the pricey rides in his “Vegas car collection”—not to be confused with collections at his homes in Los Angeles and Miami—include a Ferrari 599 GTB, a Ferrari 458 Spider, a Lamborghini Aventador, a Bugatti Veyron, a Rolls Royce Phantom Drophead, a Bentley Mulsanne, a Rolls Royce Silver Seraph and a Mercedes VIZ 600.
Incidentally, the cheapest car on that list—the Ferrari 458 Spider—goes for a cool $257,412 at Cars.com, and the collection as a whole rings up at more than $2 million.
“We work hard,” Mayweather said, “so we play hard."
Doing it on Foot
While his imminent opponent prefers high-end rides, Alvarez was shown perfecting his sprinting craft as he wound down time in intensive training at Big Bear, Calif.
“He does the sprinting because it pushes the heart,” Chepo Reynoso said. “It gives you the explosiveness that you’ll need in a fight.”
Coming down to the final days of camp, Reynoso claimed Alvarez’s best time among a series of back-to-back 800-meter sprints had been three minutes, six seconds. But, on the last run-through shown on the All Access broadcast, the personal best was trimmed to 2:52.
Incidentally, the world track and field record at the 800-meter distance—which is roughly half-a-mile—is one minute, 40.91 seconds by Kenyan David Rudisha in London in August 2012.
No Love from Eddie
Aside from the fighters, the previously anonymous Eddie Reynoso was the champion of face time in the third episode, much of it coming when he was directing venom toward Mayweather.
After showing the habitual extravagance of the Mayweather entourage, the narrative referred to Alvarez’s proceedings as an atmosphere of “cool confidence.”
As a soundtrack to footage of sparring partner Shane Mosley Jr., Reynoso was overheard dispensing advice to his fighter for handling the atmosphere of fight night in Vegas.
“You have to stay focused when you see him acting like a fu*king clown, and when he gets in the ring with 30 other clowns,” he said. Then, in a reference to Mayweather’s signature hard word/dedication mantra, he said, “What fu*king ‘hard work’? Around here, we got balls.”
Unless otherwise noted, all quotes were obtained from Showtime's All Access Mayweather vs. Canelo Episode 3, which aired on Sept. 6, 2013.
Read more Boxing news on BleacherReport.com
