Floyd Mayweather vs Manny Pacquiao: Killers, bums and fights for food - some bizarre bouts have shaped May 2 meeting

The duo meet in Las Vegas next month

Floyd Mayweather and Manny Pacquiao go head-to-head (GETTY IMAGES)

There is little chance of Rustico Torrecampo or Arnulfo Bravo being ringside for the Floyd Mayweather and Manny Pacquiao fight in Las Vegas on 2 May.

In 1994, Bravo, weighing less than eight stone, beat Mayweather for the first time in the semi-final of the US Junior championships. As for the exotically named Torrecampo, he defeated Pacquiao for the first time as a professional in 1996 when the pair split about $80.

Mayweather is unbeaten in 47 fights as a professional and has only been pushed close twice, but there is every chance that he replays his five documented amateur defeats in his head on a regular basis. As far as I can make out, he disputes each one – especially his elimination from the 1996 Olympics in the semi-finals.

After the Bravo loss, Mayweather was beaten by Martin Castillo Garcia in an international against Mexico. Then Carlos Navarro beat him in the trials for the Pan American Games. In 1995, he travelled to the World championships in Berlin. He got a bye, then beat a Romanian, but lost in the quarter-finals to Algeria’s Noureddine Medjihoud. He was 18 and refused offers to turn professional, which looked like a bad move when he lost in the Olympic trials to Augie Sanchez. It meant that Mayweather had to win twice in the box-offs to reach Atlanta, which he did, beating Sanchez in back-to-back fights.

From my ringside perch in Atlanta, which during Olympic boxing actually means about 30 rows back in a steep block of seats, the defeat to Bulgaria’s Serafim Todorov was not a robbery. Mayweather left the ring screaming and personally paid the $100 to lodge a formal complaint with the organisers, demanding a “reversal of this decision under the fairness of sport”. It never happened and in the final Todorov was unlucky to lose to Thailand’s Somluck Kamsing.

Floyd Mayweather hits the speed bag as he poses for photographers ahead of the big fight (AFP/Getty Images)

The New York Times recently tracked Todorov down to the wrong side of the tracks in Sofia, where he is struggling to make ends meet selling cigarettes on the street. He claims that the promoters came for him after the fight, he said “no” and they turned instead to Mayweather; it is a nice little bit of rubbish, a tiny boxing fantasy.

Mayweather is part of a long-established fighting family and the thieves, liars and bottom-feeding wretches from the professional circuit were promising him millions long before Todorov bewildered him in the ring. Mayweather refused the conmen and did his own sensible deal – and has not lost since that fight, although the HBO commentary team thought that Jose Luis Castillo beat him in their first fight in 2002. It was tight and what is conveniently forgotten is the criticism Mayweather received when it was over for his “don’t-fancy-it type of fight”, as veteran writer Graham Houston described it.

In 2007, Oscar De La Hoya negotiated a purse of $50m and dropped a debatable split decision to Mayweather. The following year, as part of the pursuit of Mayweather, Pacquiao ruined De La Hoya in a sad spectacle. At that point, Pacquiao looked unbeatable and the fight against the American a long, long way off.

A year or two before Mayweather’s last loss as an amateur, Pacquiao was sleeping on bunk beds in a gym and fighting for $5 in scraps organised for gamblers. If he won, he bought rice. If he lost, he starved.

There is no reliable record of those fights for food, back when he was a gym rat in Manila, and not yet 16.

“We have no idea what his real weight would be,” claimed Bob Arum, who once promoted Mayweather and now promotes Pacquiao. “When he was a kid, he had nothing to eat, his body was not allowed to grow naturally.”

Manny Pacquiao will meet Floyd Mayweather on 2 May (Getty Images)

Pacquiao finally turned professional soon after turning 16 and lost legitimately for the first time in his 12th fight, when he was beaten by Torrecampo, who was actually in charge of putting up the ring and only took the fight at short notice. Pacquiao was knocked out in the fight and he was carried unconscious from the ring, coming round 30 minutes later.

In his book Pacman, American author Gary Poole adds a mad twist to Torrecampo’s life. It seems that the short-tempered Torrecampo, who sold street food from a sidecar, chased a garbage truck driver who had crushed his vehicle and killed him, stabbing him twice. He is said to still be on the run from a murder rap. So he will not be ringside as part of Pacquiao’s touring party of eccentrics, which includes his mother, who spends entire fights talking in tongues and putting spells on her son’s opponents.

Three years later, Pacquiao was beaten again, this time when losing his WBC flyweight title to Medgoen Singsurat in Thailand. Once again, he was knocked out in the third round. In 2005, he lost to the Mexican Erik Morales on points but then stopped Morales in the rematch the following year. In 2012, Tim Bradley won a disputed split decision and then, in a finish that looked likely to permanently doom the Mayweather fight, he was knocked out and left unconscious on the canvas by Juan Manuel Marquez.

Yet nothing can stop a big payday, certainly not a loss, a knockout by a killer or a few dodgy decisions in a long, lost part of a glittering career.