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Leonard Ellerbe Exclusive: The Brains Behind The Money Mayweather Team

leonard ellerbe

NEW YORK — If Mayweather Promotions, a billion dollar earning machine, decides to have its own currency, no other face deserves to be on the legal tender other than that of CEO Leonard Ellerbe.

“He left a six-figure job to work for me, He worked his way up to the top. He’s a multi-millionaire now,” Floyd Mayweather told The Washington Post in a September 2014 feature piece.

Yup, Ellerbe sure is rich.

He wears it. He smells it. And he definitely looks like it.

Boxing News and Views was able to catch a brief interview with the famous CEO moments after the Manny Pacquiao-Adrien Broner press conference last Monday at the Gotham Hall in Manhattan, New York.

He wore a custom-tailored suit that revealed not a single crease or wrinkle, an Armani if I may hasten to guess.

His eyes hid behind designer glasses, his shoes gleamed with fine leather, and his pearly white teeth helped light the dimly lit venue.

As soon as he was done grabbing something to eat from a menu that included Teriyaki salmon, pasta and heavenly sweets for desserts, BNAV grabbed the affable Ellerbe, who rose from his humble beginnings in Northeast D.C. to become a partner to one of the most powerful figures in all of sports.

I asked him the only question that mattered: “Is there a Pacquiao-Mayweather 2?”

Standing erect, his hands clasped firmly together, Ellerbe, who enlisted with the Air Force as a youngster, smiled and replied:

“Adrien Broner is fighting Manny Pacquiao on January 19, 2019. It will be shown on Showtime pay-per-view.”

While the media has speculated that Pacquiao’s fight with Broner is a prelude to a rematch with Mayweather, Ellerbe has made it implicitly clear that there have not been discussions about a sequel to MayPac 1 in 2015.

Not a word spoken, Ellerbe insists.

As it turned out, multiple media outlets are reporting that MayPac 2 is indeed not a sure bet just yet.

As it turned out, too, Ellerbe is no lying witness, either.

He is a defense attorney’s worst nightmare. He doesn’t flinch. He doesn’t sweat. He doesn’t melt against hostile cross-examination.

Ellerbe, 53, grew up in Northeast Washington in a two-bedroom, first-floor apartment. His mother, cleaned houses for a living while his father washed other people’s cars.

But those were not hindrances. It became the fuel that drove him.

Today, Ellerbe is worth $120 million, per The Wealth Record.

Leonard Ellerbe isn’t just a boxing man or businessman.

He is an inspiring  rags-to-riches story.

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Homer D. Sayson

Homer D. Sayson