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As the son of welterweight boxer, Floyd Mayweather Snr, it’s perhaps no surprise that Floyd Mayweather Jnr also went into the boxing industry, albeit with far greater success.
Mayweather Jnr retired undefeated in 2017, after winning 15 major world championships fighting across 5 different weight categories, dispatching 50 opponents in professional fights and being named fighter of the decade for the 2010s.
Amongst those he defeated were Conor McGregor, Manny Pacquiao, and Ricky Hatton, so it’s no wonder that during his peak he was the richest sports star in the world.
It’s not just boxing that he loves though, Mayweather Jnr is an avid sports fan and a keen betting man besides, and punting is a hobby he enjoys regularly.
His preference is usually to place large bets at short odds, at least going by the betslips he has shared online. Across an 18 month period between 2010 and 2012, Mayweather shared 46 betslips totalling $3,890,833 in stakes, and taking $3,938,722 in winnings, averaging odds somewhere around evens.
He even tried to bet $400,000 on himself before he fought Conor McGregor, but the sportsbook weren’t keen.
Unlike most other punters though, he can boast career earnings of $1.1 billion, so he has a little more to play with than the rest of us.
He liked to show it too, regularly posing for photographs with large amounts of money, or posting videos online opening bags and suitcases overflowing with bank notes.
You can’t buy class, right?
This behaviour did buy him the nickname ‘Money’ though, and although he seems to have calmed down since retiring, he is still sometimes referred to as Floyd ‘Money’ Mayweather.
Big Bets
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In the final third of his boxing career, Mayweather Jnr really amped up the number of bets he was making, and the stake sizes.
He was regularly betting hundreds of thousands of dollars, and on a few occasions he even staked 7 figures, but he took a lot of flack for only ever talking about his wins, and never his losses.
And those losses are thought to be substantial.
A report in Maxim suggested that in 2017 alone, he lost $50 million to the bookies.
The truth of this is up for debate, and other stories – such as him losing $10 million on a Superbowl bet – have been debunked in the past, but still, he has definitely lost big at times.
The fact that he publicises fewer bets these days, and usually nowhere near the size of his biggest, probably speak to his change in betting behaviour.
For example, you are more likely to see him make bets in the tens of thousands than the hundreds nowadays, and for someone with a reported $450 million in the bank, that’s pocket money.
So Floyd Mayweather Jnr is still a high stakes gambler by most people’s definition, but he is no longer one of the worlds biggest bettors.
He certainly used to be though.
Floyd Mayweather Jnr's Biggest Bets
Floyd Mayweather Placed Colossal $5.9 Million On Miami Heat And Won
If this bet is true, and most people accept that it is, then it is the largest wager Floyd Mayweather Jnr has ever placed. It came just after he earned around $250 million from boxing contracts, which makes sense of why the bet is so much bigger than most of his others, but he has never confirmed or denied it.
Supposedly, he split the wager across several different bookmakers, which is no surprise given how much money he wanted to put down, which was $5.9 million. He was backing Miami Heat to beat the Indiana Pacers in the 7th game of the series, and they had lost their last, so it was a risker bet than he usually goes for.
Floyd Mayweather Stakes $1.1 Million On Oregon Wins $1 Million
A 7 figure punt isn't Mayweather Jnr's usual style, but he bet big on this one. The man makes an awful lot of wagers in the tens of thousands, and a fair few in the high hundreds of thousands, but the $1.1 million he staked on the Oregon Ducks beating Arizona State Sun Devils was a risk.
He won of course - you wouldn't be hearing about it if he didn't, Mayweather doesn't talk about his losses - and banked a cool $1 million in winnings.
This was during Mayweather's most prolific betting period, so at the time was just one of many big bets he was putting on, but it gained headlines due to the size of the wager.
Broncos Bet Turns $815,000 Into $1.4 Million For Mayweather Jnr
One of a series of bets in the region of $800k around the same time, this one backed the Denver Broncos to defeat the New York Jets. Interestingly, it was due to the Broncos' crushing defeat in the Super Bowl that Mayweather won over $1.8 million in 2012, so they certainly seem to be a bit of a talisman team for him.
He ended up taking more than $600k in winnings from the bet, but his $800k stake almost went down the drain when the score was closer than he predicted at the end of the game. It took a play in the dying seconds of the game to save his bet, but that didn't stop Mayweather bragging about it on social media.
Another $800k Winning NFL Bet For Mayweather Who Banks $1,561,904
This was Mayweather Jnr's second bet of $800k in as many weeks, and it was another winner for him. Taking odds a hair under evens, Mayweather was able to double his money by backing the Arizona Cardinals to cover the tiny 3.5 spread, although it did look a little tight for a while in the 3rd quarter.
It was a busy time for Floyd, who seemed to be posting winning betting slips every week for a while, and his stakes were consistently high around this time too. With this one, he added a further $1,561,904 to his pot, but as always, he kept any losses quiet.
Bronco's Crushing Superbowl Defeat Nets Floyd Mayweather Jr $1.8 Million
As a fan of large stakes at very short odds, this one would probably pass as a riskier punt as far as Floyd Mayweather Jnr is concerned. Odds would have been somewhere around the 21/5 mark (so a little longer than 4/1), which, when you consider that his bets are usually made shorter than evens, is a big change.
He obviously had great faith though, since he favours betting on a team to beat the spread in most circumstances, but for this game where the spread was just 2.5, he bet on a win by 7.5 points or more.
Maybe he fancied upping the ante since it was the Super Bowl, who knows, but he was right to do so, because his team, the Seattle Seahawks, absolutely destroyed the Denver Broncos and won him $1,825,714.28.