本帖最后由 黄拳全黄 于 2014-9-19 22:27 编辑
很感人！
Leonard Ellerbe & Floyd Mayweather: Eighteen Years (And Counting) of the Most Successful Team in Boxing
BY TIM SMITH
There are not a lot of enduring relationships in boxing. Boxers dump managers. Promoters sue boxers. Fathers become estranged from sons they have trained since they were toddlers. It is not the kind of business that engenders long-term fidelity. That’s why the bond between Leonard Ellerbe and Floyd Mayweather goes beyond the norm. What makes it even rarer is that Mayweather is the top boxer in the sport, the highest paid athlete in the world and his world is one of the most high pressure environments you’ll ever find. Even the strongest marriage might not survive it. But for the last 18 years Ellerbe has been in Mayweather’s corner, physically and figuratively, helping the No. 1 Pound-for-Pound best boxer put together one of the most remarkable careers in the history of the sport. Whatever role Mayweather has asked Ellerbe to take on – strength and conditioning coach, bodyguard, driver, CEO of his promotion company – Ellerbe has done it without question or hesitation. That loyalty has paid dividends for both men. So Ellerbe, the 49-year-old CEO of Mayweather Promotions, will be in his usual position, in Mayweather’s corner, when the 37-year-old champion steps into the ring for the rematch against Marcos Maidana in a 12-round championship match at the MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas on SHOWTIME PPV on Sept. 13. Ellerbe explained that his longevity with Mayweather comes from the fact that he has been with the boxer from the start of his career. “I believed (in him) from the beginning. It’s all about sacrifice,’’ Ellerbe said. “If you believe in something you have to put all your effort into it. We had the same kind of vision. We both saw the same things that nobody else saw. Our attitude was: We can do this.’’ Over the years they have built an open line of communications, rock solid trust and have shared sacrifices. “Leonard used to go on trips, used to pay his own way to go on trips with us and just help out, and he used to leave his job,” Mayweather said in a New York Times article earlier this year. “One particular time, he was doing some charity work for me. He was doing everything to make sure I got up to do my runs. He was doing security work for me and everything. We strive for the best, but at the end of the day, it’s about communication, and one thing that we can do, I respect him as a man, he respects me as a man and we can communicate.” Ellerbe, who was born and raised in Washington D.C., befriended Mayweather’s uncle, Roger, during Ellerbe’s career in amateur boxing. Ellerbe would visit Roger and Jeff Mayweather and hang out in Las Vegas. Occasionally their nephew, Floyd, would come out from Grand Rapids, Mich., for a visit and Ellerbe met the teenager in passing. Roger Mayweather always told Ellerbe that his nephew was a special boxer and would become a world champion. Ellerbe was impressed by the way that Floyd comported himself. “What I observed was a young kid who dressed nice for a teenager. Coming from the inner city you can tell when kids have their stuff together,’’ Ellerbe said. “He’s always been mindful of how he carries himself out in public. Where I come from those things are important. You pick up on those kinds of things.’’ Soon Ellerbe developed a relationship with Floyd. He said it was something along the lines of a big brother and little brother relationship. “It came from a respect level where I was older and I had myself together and reminded him a lot of himself when he was getting to know me in that short time frame. I had a job and I was somebody who had them self together,’’ Ellerbe said. Ellerbe was a personal trainer in Washington D.C., working with a high-profile clientele and earning good money when he decided to take a leap of faith and begin working with Mayweather. It was shortly after Mayweather left the amateurs and turned pro in 1996. The decision to move to Las Vegas, leaving behind his mother, father and brother, to take a job with a young boxer for less money than he was ** in Washington tested Ellerbe’s confidence in his ability to succeed. He said Mayweather paid him just $2,000 a month for a job that didn’t have a real description. If Mayweather called and said to meet at the gym at 2 a.m., Ellerbe would be there waiting for him. If Mayweather said he needed someone to drive him someplace, Ellerbe would be there with the car running. If Mayweather needed someone to be the bodyguard, Ellerbe would be there leading the way and putting his body on the line. If Mayweather needed someone to help him with conditioning, Ellerbe would be there ready to do road work or lead a workout. “That translated into he could see I was loyal and committed and a tireless worker. Back then people around him would be focused on other things. I was focused on him,’’ Ellerbe said. “He was focused on hard work and getting his work done. We’d work around the clock and it would be me and him. I knew he was something special. The first thing for me was rock with me and it’s going to be greater later. “I stayed loyal and committed. I never complained. I knew the situation would get better because we believed and I was all in. I was the one constant that was in our situation.’’ Ellerbe knows all about sacrifice. He grew up poor in the projects in northeast Washington D.C., living in a small two-bedroom apartment with his mother, father and younger brother. Growing up him and younger brother, Lawrence, slept in the same twin bed, feet to head. Roaches invaded their home because their apartment was on the lower level located next to the place where people dumped their garbage. His mother cleaned other people’s homes and his father washed and waxed cars for a living. “Everyday we had to depend on how much my dad made,’’ Ellerbe said. “We had to depend on my father and see what he was doing at work to determine whether we were going to eat. We spent many days eating grits and bacon and ham for dinner, because it was a cheap meal. Many days you didn’t know what you were going to eat until your dad got home.’’ Even though it was a meager existence, Ellerbe said their home was filled with love and respect for each other. And he and his brother were raised with moral values. “My mother and father were both hard working Christians. I come from a religious family,’’ he said. “My parents were churchgoing people. Their family was from the south (North Carolina) and we grew up respecting other people.’’ His early life taught him all about sacrifice, hard work and dedication. And it made him hungry to succeed and do whatever it took to get there. A major turning point in his life occurred when his brother was killed in a tragic accident at work in 1999. Ellerbe was helping Mayweather train in a Las Vegas gym when he got a phone call from his brother’s supervisor at United Airlines at Reagan National Airport in Washington D.C. His brother, who was 18-months younger, was a baggage handler for the airline. He was driving a baggage cart to an area under the terminal. A sensor that would prompt the door to open leading to the garage area failed. The door remained shut as Lawrence Ellerbe sped toward the opening. Compounding the situation was the fact that the brakes failed on the cart. He slammed fullspeed into the closed door and suffered a broken neck. He died instantly. “It was the worst thing that ever happened in my life to this day,’’ Ellerbe said. No one had informed his mother. Telling a mother that one of her two sons had died in a tragic accident is not the kind of news you deliver over the phone. So Ellerbe flew from Las Vegas to Washington D.C. to tell his parents. His father had traveled to North Carolina to attend to Ellerbe’s sick grandmother. After telling mother that his brother had been killed – she collapsed and had to be hospitalized after hearing the bad news – Ellerbe drove to North Carolina to tell his father. He also collapsed and had to be hospitalized. “I had two parents in the hospital and my brother was dead,’’ Ellerbe said. His brother left behind a daughter, who was 8-years-old at the time. Now it was up to Ellerbe to take care of his parents and his niece. “It was 100 percent about ** sure that you make this situation (with Mayweather) work because you have to be the leader of your family and make that work. It made me a stronger better person. All my focus was into Floyd, working around the clock. When I say 24 hours a day, I was working 25.’’ Ellerbe said his parents were never the same after his brother died. His father died after a bout with cancer in 2008. His mother died from complications from a respiratory ailment the two weeks before Mayweather’s fight with Miguel Cotto in 2010. No one knew the heavy emotional burden that Ellerbe was carrying leading up to and after that fight. “I’m ** arrangement and nobody knows. All this happens the week before the fight week,’’ Ellerbe said. “She passed away two weeks before the fight and I’m in Las Vegas with no help. I have to go back to Washington D.C. bury my mother. I take a red eye on Saturday. They had the wake and the funeral on Sunday. I buried my mother and was back in Las Vegas that night to get ready for fight week. I didn’t have time to mourn it. I probably still haven’t. I use work to get through all this.’’ Ellerbe said his closest living relative is his niece. His brother, parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles are all dead. He throws all his energies into helping Mayweather. As Mayweather’s right hand man, Ellerbe has been around for all of the upheavals and big moments in Mayweather’s adult life. When Mayweather split with his father, Floyd, Sr., as his trainer; hired and fired James Prince as his manager; left Top Rank Promotions, and joined forces with Al Haymon, Ellerbe has been the one constant.
As Mayweather has evolved as a businessman, Ellerbe has risen right along with him. Ellerbe is noted as a shrewd marketer and is credited with helping to make Mayweather more of a crossover star with appearances on the TV show “Dancing with the Stars’’ and the WWE. As the CEO of Mayweather Promotions, Ellerbe is in charge of the signing and development of the young boxers to Mayweather Promotions and he also helps to stage the shows. There is little down time in his schedule. Good thing he doesn’t require a lot of sleep. “Strength and patience are my greatest assets,’’ he said. “When everyone else is panicking under pressure and freaking out, I’m not. The stuff I’ve been through in my life this isn’t that serious. You have a whole different take on life. I’m able to excel under difficult situations. I’m able to work through these things because I have the strength and patience that comes from God.’’ Share this:
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