I recently had the chance to interview veteran trainer, ‘Jazzy’ Jeff Mayweather. Jeff is a former IBO super featherweight champion who now works as a trainer for many top fighters in the sport. Mayweather joins me on to discuss the recent victory by his nephew, Floyd Mayweather, over Marcos Maidana. ‘Jazzy’ Jeff also gives his thoughts on the opinions of some that claim that Floyd is losing a step in the ring. Lastly, Jeff Mayweather talks about the rift between Floyd Mayweather and CEO of Mayweather Promotions, Leonard Ellerbe, and why he thinks these problems are surfacing now. Here is what Jeff Mayweather had to say in part 1 of his interview.

Robert Brown: How would you assess Floyd Mayweather’s recent performance against Marcos Maidana?

Jeff Mayweather: Well I thought it was a brilliant performance. He didn’t give himself as much credit as he should have. I thought he fought a great fight. I thought he kept the fight at the center of the ring, he fought real smart. He didn’t let Maidana get his punches off and he would grab Maidana and Maidana couldn’t get anything off.

Once Floyd knew the fight was pretty much in the bag — which I thought he won ten out of twelve rounds — he showed everybody that he still has his legs and Freddie Roach is just blowing smoke up everybody’s ass.

Robert Brown: Many people are saying that it appears that Floyd may be slowing down a little. Do you think the reason people say that is because Floyd’s gotten hit with a few shots in the last few fight and they’re not used to seeing him get hit at all?

Jeff Mayweather: Of course. The thing is this, the expectations for Floyd are beyond reality. Floyd is used to dominating everybody and that’s what he did. Floyd’s human, he’s like everybody else, he gets hit. He got caught clean with a big shot and it hurt him, fortunately it was at the end of the bell.

Robert Brown: Floyd recently said he and Leonard Ellerbe might be outgrowing each other. What do you make of this?

Jeff Mayweather: It’s one of those things, sometimes things run their course and when they do, you just gotta part ways. Floyd already said it, there’s gonna be changes. If he’s a man of his word, I guess that Leonard Ellerbe won’t be there anymore.

Robert Brown: Is there an expectation that Floyd is not happy with the level of growth of Mayweather Promotions and the roster, and he would have expected Mayweather Promotions to be a lot bigger by this stage?

Jeff Mayweather: Well, I don’t think it has too much to do with that as opposed to — I mean, their promotion has only really been up for maybe two years and basically they got two world champions. You can’t really say the company is bad, of course Floyd could have a whole lot better fighter as a whole, but at the end of the day I think they are doing pretty good and I don’t think that’s the case either.

I think what the real thing with this is that Richard Schaefer was the guy that was actually doing all the work and Leonard wasn’t really doing anything in terms of being a promoter and being a CEO, other than just talking about it. Basically, I think that once Richard Schaefer had to step back and leave boxing alone for a little while, I think that Leonard had to actually put on his promoters hat and this was really his first time at actually having to step in that position and really take charge of it and I think he dropped the ball.

Robert Brown: So Schaefer leaving boxing exposed Leonard Ellerbe’s lack of promotion skills, in your opinion?

Jeff Mayweather: Yeah I would say that, and I think that’s a fair assessment because I think that it’s easy to sit back and just talk, but once Richard Schaefer was gone, everything that happened was wrong.

Like I said, something so simple — you don’t put up a belt to a guy that has never even fought in the weight class. Not only that, that’s extra money that you have to pay, the sanctioning fees, you have to pay for each belt that you put up. Don’t get me wrong, it was just the fact that he probably just really didn’t know, because he never really had to do it.

***Stay tuned to ontheropesboxing.com for part 2 of my interview with Jeff Mayweather***