This Boxer Is Looking to Reverse Big Decision

“Does Bill Clinton read your paper? Can you help me?” Floyd Mayweather asked, as forlorn as an Olympian can sound while on the verge of fighting for gold and glory. “I wrote a letter to the White House, but I ain’t heard back. I ain’t heard nothing from nobody.

“Man, I just got to get my father out of prison.”

He is trying to lose neither his cool nor his mind, trying to forget about everything but his first-round featherweight bout Monday against some 125-pound stranger from Kazakhstan, but Mayweather, 19, who comes from what he proudly hails as a “fighting family” from Grand Rapids, Mich., can’t stop thinking about his father, who is also his personal coach.

Floyd Mayweather Sr. is inside a Michigan penitentiary, convicted on a 1993 drug-trafficking charge.

“They got him caged up like an animal,” Floyd Jr. says, his face and voice full of pain.

Crawling the walls himself, so edgy about getting the Olympic Games under way that the U.S. boxing coach has been concerned Mayweather might begin taking out his impatience on his teammates, Mayweather feels empty inside without his father, who might not even be able to watch his Olympic fights on the prison television.

Because television has deemed boxing unworthy of prime time, for the most part, Mayweather says, “My dad ain’t going to be able to stay up to no midnight for NBC to finally get around to showing me. He can’t pick and choose when he watches TV.

“They gave him five years. He’s locked up in there, and it just hurts me so. He can’t find out how I do until they give him a phone call. If I win a medal, I’m going to want to hug him, maybe give him that medal around his neck. But I’m going to have to fill out a visitor’s pass up in Michigan to do it.”

Both his father and uncle, Roger Mayweather, were professional fighters of some renown. While other neighborhood children were in Little League, playing baseball, Floyd Jr., whose nickname is “Pretty Boy,” knew the smells and sounds of a gymnasium better than he knew his own backyard’s.

He still has snapshots at home. “Me, up on my tippy-toes, standing on a chair and hittin’ the speed bag. The boxers, they’d get down on their knees so I could put the gloves on and box ‘em. I really knocked one down once. I was so happy. He just went flyin’.

“My father and my uncle didn’t tell me till a bunch of years later, the guy faked it. Man, I can still see him flyin’ from when I hit him. Really funny.”

All his life, Floyd Jr. has had two goals--to follow in his family’s footsteps into the ring and to put on a good show.

He is a colorful fighter, full of nervous energy and flamboyance. Coaches keep cautioning Mayweather that his habit of going low, punching the opponent’s body, isn’t suited to the Olympics, where three-round bouts are decided on a computerized point system of blows landed, not on weakening an opponent with a shot to the ribs.

Mayweather won’t listen to anybody but his father.

“I know what’s good for me. He knows what’s good for me,” Floyd Jr. says. “I’m still workin’ the body, no matter what. You watch. It slows an opponent up. Three rounds is enough. I don’t need no 15 rounds. If I hurt the man, high or low, he ain’t going to want any part of me. I trained for the computer. Nine times out of 10, I’m still going to win, don’t worry.

“All I know is, people don’t want to come see no boring fight. I feel I’m a crowd-pleaser. That’s why I ought to be on TV.”

Al Mitchell, the U.S. coach, gets under Mayweather’s skin sometimes, without meaning any harm.

For example, Mitchell more than once has spoken of the many good stories on his U.S. squad, referring to some “inner-city kids” who have made something of their lives through boxing.

Mayweather interrupts such talk, right in front of Mitchell. He says, “I’m not no inner-city hard-luck case. I’ve had a good life.”

He agrees with U.S. light-heavyweight Antonio Tarver, who also seemed tired of boxers being stereotyped. Tarver pointed out, “Nobody on our team was born with a gold spoon in his mouth. But I know Floyd, for example, and he isn’t some kid from the slums.”

But even when someone seems to take his side, Mayweather can be contrary. It’s in his nature.

After the coach expressed no concern over how a computer would score the fights, saying he had faith in his fighters’ abilities, Mayweather scoffed and said: “That’s because the coaches don’t got to get in there and fight.”

Only his father’s opinion matters to Mayweather, who says even when he turns professional, promoters will have to deal with his dad, in prison or out. He trusts no one else. Others won’t care about what’s best for him.

“They want advice about using me, they got to go to Milan [Mich.] and fill out a visitor’s form and talk to him through the glass, if that’s where he still is. My dad’s going to protect me, because I’m his blood. He ain’t going to be out for some fast buck like other guys, not where I’m concerned.

“I ain’t saying he’s led a perfect life. The streets ain’t for everybody. What happened to him proved that, because he was in the wrong place at the wrong time. But they didn’t get him red-handed. My daddy went to jail on hearsay. He don’t belong in there. That’s why I even wrote to Bill Clinton, because maybe he can do something. I ain’t sure where else to try.”

Mayweather tries to forget, but he can’t.

He can train. He can punch. “It’s just hard to fight with a lump in your throat,” he says, shaking his head and then cupping it with his hand, picturing his father, caged like an animal.