LAS VEGAS — In the industrial area behind Circus Circus, where tourists do not venture intentionally, is a squat cinder block building that houses Barry’s Boxing Center. Inside, high on a wall crowded with framed photographs of boxers, familiar and not, is the defeated face of Floyd Mayweather Jr.
He is looking at his hands while, on the other side of the referee, Augie Sanchez is forever caught in celebratory midleap. It was 1996, at the United States Olympic trials, the last fight that Mayweather admits that he lost fair and square.
“I never thought this guy, who I roomed with, who was 106 pounds when I met him, now he’s the best pound-for-pound fighter and going down as one of the best fighters in history?