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FLOYD MAYWEATHER: "I'M VERY HAPPY TO HAVE MY FREEDOM...EVERYTHING IS UP IN THE AIR"
By Ben Thompson | September 14, 2012
"I'm very happy to have my freedom, of course. I just feel that it was a minor setback for a major comeback, and when I say comeback, that doesn't mean just boxing. I'm saying life, period. I feel everything was just a learning experience. It's something that I don't wish on my worst enemy, but things happen. The only thing I did was, I did my time. It's all about moving forward, keeping a positive mind frame, and staying focused. And, you know, I'm ready to take it to that next level as far as more business ventures outside of the ring...If I would've been on house arrest, I would've fought again this year, but, you know, after the incident and that situation, I don't really know what I want to do anymore. After the Cotto fight, I was so motivated to get back in the gym, but now, after this, I really don't know what I want to do at this particular time. Everything is up in the air," stated undefeated pound-for-pound king Floyd Mayweather, who returned to FightHype.com to give his fans an exclusive interview. You do not want to miss what he had to say. Check it out!
BT: Champ, it's good to hear from you again. I appreciate you taking the time to speak to me.
FM: You have always been fair and honest, Ben, so, you know, that's why I don't mind doing interviews with you. Like I said before, I just like to be treated fair, so that's why I'm always going to give you an exclusive.
BT: I definitely appreciate that. So how have you been, man?
FM: I'm very happy to have my freedom, of course. I just feel that it was a minor setback for a major comeback, and when I say comeback, that doesn't mean just boxing. I'm saying life, period. I feel everything was just a learning experience. It's something that I don't wish on my worst enemy, but things happen. The only thing I did was, I did my time. It's all about moving forward, keeping a positive mind frame, and staying focused. And, you know, I'm ready to take it to that next level as far as more business ventures outside of the ring.
BT: I know there were reports about you suffering from dehydration and losing weight while you were serving your time. Can you touch on some of the things you had to deal with?
FM: I was in administrative segregation, which is a professional way of saying the hole or solitary confinement. I was locked up 23 hours a day on the weekdays. On weekends, you don't come out at all; you're locked up 48 hours. You can't shower at all on the weekends.
BT: That's crazy.
FM: What happened was, when I first went in, the food and water was a major issue. Every now and then, there was something healthy like a orange on the tray, and I would eat that, but that's about it. I survived off my commissary list for the most part. It tells you your max limits for certain items that you can order. There was no max limit on waters, so when I first got in, I ordered 6 waters and they brought me 6 waters. Next time, I ordered 15 waters and thats when I started having problems with my water orders from that point. Then I was getting dehydrated. No matter how much water I drank, my urine was a very, very dark yellow. Then I started to get small. I said I wanted to be tested by a sports doctor, so Dr. Voy came in. He's one of the best sports doctors to ever live. He's been an Olympic doctor since the 80's, maybe since the 70's, I'm really not sure, but this guy has always been a phenomenal doctor.
BT: Being an elite athlete, I take it he diagnosed your situation and felt it could possibly have an impact on the future of your career.
FM: He said that I was very dehydrated and I needed to be eating properly and I needed to be working out. I wasn't even in there a month and I already started losing weight. The whole time I was in there, I lost 15 pounds. I think I went down to under 140. I had lost weight and was dehydrated, so Dr. Voy basically informed me, "It's unhealthy for you. You have to eat." I said, "I'm not eating that food." The food had a very bad smell. It's just food that I truly disapproved of. I didn't want to eat. So Dr. Voy ran tests on me and my blood pressure was real high because of everything I was eating. Ramen Noodles has a lot of salt; then you got Doritos. I would drink a Coca-Cola every once in a while, but then I stopped. He was saying it was bad and would hurt my career because I haven't been doing any type of physical workout or doing something to keep myself active, if I had plans of coming out and staying at that top level and competing against the top competition. You can't just sit for 90 days, dehydrated without eating, thinking you're just going to come back and compete with guys that are active.
BT: The way they portrayed it in the media was like you were complaining because you just didn't like the type of food it was.
FM: Yes, I refused to eat the food, not because it wasn't what I wanted to eat, but because it was nasty and unhealthy. So I knew I was better off with what was packaged on my commissary list. I have never known bologna to be purple, which was one of the things served for breakfast. You eat breakfast at 4:00 in the morning, you eat lunch at 9:00AM, and then you eat dinner at 4:00PM, and you don't eat again until 4:00 in the morning. You have guys that come in at 300 pounds and go all the way down to 170 pounds. I had gotten really upset, because I didn't like the fact that they didn't put everything out there. Even their medical staff said that my blood pressure was very high and I was very dehydrated and I had lost a lot of muscle mass. then I read in the newspapers how they were very rude and disrespectful to Dr. Voy, and he's a great guy, a very positive guy. With my situation, my attorney's job is to put me in the best situation as they could possibly put me in. If I would've been on house arrest, I would've fought again this year, but, you know, after the incident and that situation, I don't really know what I want to do anymore. After the Cotto fight, I was so motivated to get back in the gym, but now, after this, I really don't know what I want to do at this particular time. Everything is up in the air.
BT: How were you able to deal with that on a day to day basis?
FM: I really got upset, but what motivated me was the fans writing me. They didn't even give all of my...did you get my letter?
BT: Nah, I never got your letter.
FM: Yeah, because you wrote me and I wrote you back. See, I wrote a lot of people back. What they do is, everything that comes in, they go through. They didn't even give me all my mail. I think I got over 100,000 letters. They gave me what they wanted to give me and they let go out what they wanted to let go out. They controlled everything.
BT: When you got out, physically you looked pretty good. Were you able to maintain some kind of physical activity to combat the nutritional issues.
FM: I really couldn't do sit-ups. I didn't have nothing to hold my feet, so I said forget it. So I bought a deck of cards and started off with 430 push-ups a day. Then 870, and then about 1300. That's why my body looked like that. Basically, that's what I was doing, a whole bunch of push-ups every day, and reading fan mail; the Robb Report, DuPont Registry, automobile magazines, and that got me through. I had gotten on a regimen.
By Ben Thompson | September 14, 2012
"I'm very happy to have my freedom, of course. I just feel that it was a minor setback for a major comeback, and when I say comeback, that doesn't mean just boxing. I'm saying life, period. I feel everything was just a learning experience. It's something that I don't wish on my worst enemy, but things happen. The only thing I did was, I did my time. It's all about moving forward, keeping a positive mind frame, and staying focused. And, you know, I'm ready to take it to that next level as far as more business ventures outside of the ring...If I would've been on house arrest, I would've fought again this year, but, you know, after the incident and that situation, I don't really know what I want to do anymore. After the Cotto fight, I was so motivated to get back in the gym, but now, after this, I really don't know what I want to do at this particular time. Everything is up in the air," stated undefeated pound-for-pound king Floyd Mayweather, who returned to FightHype.com to give his fans an exclusive interview. You do not want to miss what he had to say. Check it out!
BT: Champ, it's good to hear from you again. I appreciate you taking the time to speak to me.
FM: You have always been fair and honest, Ben, so, you know, that's why I don't mind doing interviews with you. Like I said before, I just like to be treated fair, so that's why I'm always going to give you an exclusive.
BT: I definitely appreciate that. So how have you been, man?
FM: I'm very happy to have my freedom, of course. I just feel that it was a minor setback for a major comeback, and when I say comeback, that doesn't mean just boxing. I'm saying life, period. I feel everything was just a learning experience. It's something that I don't wish on my worst enemy, but things happen. The only thing I did was, I did my time. It's all about moving forward, keeping a positive mind frame, and staying focused. And, you know, I'm ready to take it to that next level as far as more business ventures outside of the ring.
BT: I know there were reports about you suffering from dehydration and losing weight while you were serving your time. Can you touch on some of the things you had to deal with?
FM: I was in administrative segregation, which is a professional way of saying the hole or solitary confinement. I was locked up 23 hours a day on the weekdays. On weekends, you don't come out at all; you're locked up 48 hours. You can't shower at all on the weekends.
BT: That's crazy.
FM: What happened was, when I first went in, the food and water was a major issue. Every now and then, there was something healthy like a orange on the tray, and I would eat that, but that's about it. I survived off my commissary list for the most part. It tells you your max limits for certain items that you can order. There was no max limit on waters, so when I first got in, I ordered 6 waters and they brought me 6 waters. Next time, I ordered 15 waters and thats when I started having problems with my water orders from that point. Then I was getting dehydrated. No matter how much water I drank, my urine was a very, very dark yellow. Then I started to get small. I said I wanted to be tested by a sports doctor, so Dr. Voy came in. He's one of the best sports doctors to ever live. He's been an Olympic doctor since the 80's, maybe since the 70's, I'm really not sure, but this guy has always been a phenomenal doctor.
BT: Being an elite athlete, I take it he diagnosed your situation and felt it could possibly have an impact on the future of your career.
FM: He said that I was very dehydrated and I needed to be eating properly and I needed to be working out. I wasn't even in there a month and I already started losing weight. The whole time I was in there, I lost 15 pounds. I think I went down to under 140. I had lost weight and was dehydrated, so Dr. Voy basically informed me, "It's unhealthy for you. You have to eat." I said, "I'm not eating that food." The food had a very bad smell. It's just food that I truly disapproved of. I didn't want to eat. So Dr. Voy ran tests on me and my blood pressure was real high because of everything I was eating. Ramen Noodles has a lot of salt; then you got Doritos. I would drink a Coca-Cola every once in a while, but then I stopped. He was saying it was bad and would hurt my career because I haven't been doing any type of physical workout or doing something to keep myself active, if I had plans of coming out and staying at that top level and competing against the top competition. You can't just sit for 90 days, dehydrated without eating, thinking you're just going to come back and compete with guys that are active.
BT: The way they portrayed it in the media was like you were complaining because you just didn't like the type of food it was.
FM: Yes, I refused to eat the food, not because it wasn't what I wanted to eat, but because it was nasty and unhealthy. So I knew I was better off with what was packaged on my commissary list. I have never known bologna to be purple, which was one of the things served for breakfast. You eat breakfast at 4:00 in the morning, you eat lunch at 9:00AM, and then you eat dinner at 4:00PM, and you don't eat again until 4:00 in the morning. You have guys that come in at 300 pounds and go all the way down to 170 pounds. I had gotten really upset, because I didn't like the fact that they didn't put everything out there. Even their medical staff said that my blood pressure was very high and I was very dehydrated and I had lost a lot of muscle mass. then I read in the newspapers how they were very rude and disrespectful to Dr. Voy, and he's a great guy, a very positive guy. With my situation, my attorney's job is to put me in the best situation as they could possibly put me in. If I would've been on house arrest, I would've fought again this year, but, you know, after the incident and that situation, I don't really know what I want to do anymore. After the Cotto fight, I was so motivated to get back in the gym, but now, after this, I really don't know what I want to do at this particular time. Everything is up in the air.
BT: How were you able to deal with that on a day to day basis?
FM: I really got upset, but what motivated me was the fans writing me. They didn't even give all of my...did you get my letter?
BT: Nah, I never got your letter.
FM: Yeah, because you wrote me and I wrote you back. See, I wrote a lot of people back. What they do is, everything that comes in, they go through. They didn't even give me all my mail. I think I got over 100,000 letters. They gave me what they wanted to give me and they let go out what they wanted to let go out. They controlled everything.
BT: When you got out, physically you looked pretty good. Were you able to maintain some kind of physical activity to combat the nutritional issues.
FM: I really couldn't do sit-ups. I didn't have nothing to hold my feet, so I said forget it. So I bought a deck of cards and started off with 430 push-ups a day. Then 870, and then about 1300. That's why my body looked like that. Basically, that's what I was doing, a whole bunch of push-ups every day, and reading fan mail; the Robb Report, DuPont Registry, automobile magazines, and that got me through. I had gotten on a regimen.
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