He was Floyd Mayweather’s coach when he last lost a competitive fight. Pat Burns can’t see it happening again.

By Kevin Byrne
“The best way I can put Floyd is he hates losing more than he loves winning”
He had a distant uncle who came over from Ireland and was killed at The Alamo, and was nearly wiped out in Vietnam himself.
Before joining the Marines, he had boxing and he returned to the sport after getting back to Florida having spent a year in hospital after almost getting KIA.
Pat, or Patrick Burns, a third-generation Irishman, coached three US Olympic teams and an undisputed world champion.
He was also in the corner the last time Floyd Mayweather lost a competitive fight.
“I’m not just an Olympian. In my heart I know I am an Olympic gold medalist. I just haven’t gone and picked up my gold medal yet,” Mayweather said in 1996, but events conspired against the 19-year-old when he met Bulgaria’s Serafim Todorov in the Atlanta semi-final.
‘Robbery’, was cried by many spectators, but the then Amateur International Boxing Association (AIBA), as ever, were not for turning.

Now aged 40, and set to meet professional boxing debutant and UFC superstar Conor McGregor in a Las Vegas money fight on Saturday night, Mayweather hasn’t been defeated since then, going 49–0 in the paid ranks where his ‘O’ has become his biggest asset.
Burns, who has coached MMA fighters and high-school wrestling in the past, would’ve liked to have worked with ‘The Notorious’ to get him up to speed to take on his former fighter.
Nothing personal, of course, just business in a rough and tough trade, ideally suited to an old Miami cop who could handle himself in a race riot.
“I coached him for the Olympic Games and really enjoyed working with Floyd, it was a lot, a lot of fun,” Burns recalls.
“It was — and I forget who the hell it was — but you know, amateur and especially international amateur boxing, it was an awful lot of… I don’t want to use the C word, but it was not the most pleasant place to be in the Olympic Games with some of the officiating. But you know, I’m not going to talk sour grapes,” continues the veteran trainer.
“He took it like a man. He was very upset. The best way I can put Floyd is he hates losing more than he loves winning. He hates to lose and he loves to win, and that drives him.
“He’s 49–0 for crying out loud. He had a couple of losses here and there (in the amateurs) and instead of bringing his head down, it just put a fire in his belly.
“And he hasn’t lost since. He’s just got a tremendous, tremendous mental focus. I’m sure he thinks about that fight all the time and it probably has helped him become the great fighter that he is.
“When a guy gets up to bat in the World Series and the base is loaded and he strikes out, and next year he hits eight home runs, he probably thinks more about striking out with the base loaded and they could have won the World Series than the five or six or ten home runs that he hits the next year. And he uses it to motivate him.”
“One of the hardest-working kids I’ve ever known”
To know Mayweather the surly adult, you have to know Mayweather the boy. His dad, Floyd Snr, and uncle, Roger, were top professionals themselves and the young ‘Pretty Boy’ was steeped in the sport. The stories are legendary and don’t need repeating. Drug problems plagued the family but the young man was above and beyond that scene, even when it came into his house.
And while militaristic Burns was the toughest of taskmasters, the kid from Grand Rapids, Michigan never game him any trouble. Probe the coach all you like, he won’t tell anyway.
Burns says: “Not at all. This kid was always eager to learn. He was early to rise and went to bed early. This is a kid who doesn’t drink and never has drunk. He doesn’t do drugs.
“He is totally committed to the sport, it’s a profession for him and he’s worked extremely hard at it.
“At 10 or 11 o’clock at night he’ll start thinking about something that he did in the gym during the day or a week ago. And it bothers him and he’ll go to the gym at 2 or 3 in the morning and work on something, maybe for 45 minutes or an hour, just work on it.
“He’s totally, totally dedicated. There was nothing hard about him. His work-ethic is phenomenal.
“Great personality, he was always clowning, but boy when he came into the gym he was a totally, totally different guy.
“Nothing has changed with Floyd. Floyd is probably one of the hardest-working kids I’ve ever known. When he was in his teens, one of my amateurs beat him a long time ago but you could just see he was loaded with talent.
“And then, over time, I got to work with him in international competitions and at the Olympics, and the guy had a great work-ethic.
“From a very young age, he knew how to read opponents and read their strong and weak points, and how to capitalise on it. He was light years ahead intellectually in the sport of boxing than most guys.”
A gift that was handed down by Floyd Snr and Roger, you suspect. But there was something different about this kid too. He was fanatical. Natural talent was only one part of the package.
“I think it’s a separate gift,” Burns adds. “There’s a lot of guys who are grounded in the sport — look at Chavez Jr, he didn’t pick up a whole lot from his dad — but I think since Floyd was a little kid, he had been around the sport.
“Since he was 10, 11, 12, he just had a passion for it and was going to do whatever it took to be a champion. He just worked extremely hard.
“Floyd has never been one of those guys afraid to try something new in the ring. And if it doesn’t work real well, he will work on it and the next thing you know he’s got a punch that comes from nowhere that people don’t see in the next fight.
“He just keeps honing and fine-tuning different aspects of his game.”
Los Angeles Times, 1996: “Does Bill Clinton read your paper? Can you help me?” Floyd Mayweather asked, as forlorn as an Olympian can sound while on the verge of fighting for gold and glory. “I wrote a letter to the White House, but I ain’t heard back. I ain’t heard nothing from nobody. Man, I just got to get my father out of prison.” He is trying to lose neither his cool nor his mind, trying to forget about everything but his first-round featherweight bout Monday against some 125-pound stranger from Kazakhstan, but Mayweather, 19, who comes from what he proudly hails as a “fighting family” from Grand Rapids, Mich., can’t stop thinking about his father, who is also his personal coach. Floyd Mayweather Sr. is inside a Michigan penitentiary, convicted on a 1993 drug-trafficking charge. “They got him caged up like an animal,” Floyd Jr says, his face and voice full of pain.
Bill Clinton never did respond to that letter and it was Burns who worked the corner for the Todorov fight, incidentally the last time Mayweather fought in the month of August. Until now, that is.
At least the young American still had a man in his corner who had seen some shit in his time.
“I started when I was eight years old. I grew up in a housing project called Larchmont Gardens in Miami that was real rough and bad,” says Burns, who also trained Ireland’s old middleweight hope John Duddy for a while.
“My mother marched me into a gym and when I went in, it was all the kids from the projects.
“It was a mixed group — blacks, Irish, Puerto Ricans. But you had to be ten years old. The coach said ‘how old is your boy?’ to my mother, and she still had a bit of a brogue, and she goes ‘oh he’d be eight years old, don’t you know’, and he goes ‘oh, you gotta be ten’, and she goes ‘oh, that’s what I told you. He’s ten years old’.
“So I started in the gym and was in there fighting, busting my butt in there before going into the Marine Corps at 17. Went off to the war, came back, became a cop, and the chief knew my background and wanted me to start a programme with the kids.
“I wanted to coach baseball because I always have but he says ‘no, I want to get the kids that are standing on the street corners, they’re not guys who’ll be on a team, I want the ones that are individuals’.
“So I started the programme with four gyms in the city. I had over 200 national champions and then I got called to coach international.
“My first match was against Russia who we hadn’t beaten in years — and we beat the crap out of them.
“I brought that Marine Corps mentality to them. I just kept winning. I had about 35 international competitions and then got to coach the 92 Games, the 96 Games and then I went to Australia for the 2000 Games. And that’s when I got involved with Jermain Taylor.

“So I’ve had a pretty good background, had some pretty good fighters, some good professional fighters, had a lot of fun. One of the guys I really had a lot of fun with was ‘Macho’ Camacho, won a world title with him. Boxing’s been really good to me.”
“We’re going to study and know more about the guy we’re fighting than his mother”
Personally, I have relatives on my mother’s side who fought in Vietnam, men who are affected by their participation for the rest of their lives but men who won’t talk about it much either. It stays with them, though. You hear the stories but can’t ask.
This time you ask, but he can’t really go there. Yet for Burns, his Marine Corps background has informed every decision he has made in his life.
He says: “There’s certain things I speak about. I’ve had issues. I was hurt really bad and was in the hospital for a year. I got wounded.
“I’ve been living with injuries and stuff. I got hit pretty bad. I don’t want to get into it but I got hit pretty bad. Now I’m trying to help other veterans who have issues and just do the best I can and get by.
“But that discipline has helped me and has helped others. I bring that Marine Corps mentality to my training.
“There’s a lot of fighters who don’t want to train with me. They just simply can’t take my training. It’s disciplined. Up early. Work hard. We’re going to study and know more about the guy we’re fighting than his girlfriend and his mother. And we’re gonna win.
“Because like John Duddy and like Floyd Mayweather, winning is nice but I hate losing. And I can’t sleep when I lose.
“I’ve instilled that into my son who’s a college baseball player, and my daughter, and all other athletes, and they’re carrying it on in their lives. Just work hard and be prepared.
“You fail to prepare and you’re just setting yourself up to lose. There’s a lot of guys who don’t wanna hear it. They don’t wanna do the hard running and the great running programme that I have, and the time in the gym, and the discipline, and eating properly and not losing all that weight, just doing things the way that you’re supposed to do them. And going in and then winning.”
Burns, having come out of the hospital after his service, became a cop in his hometown, serving for 26 years. He can look after himself in a spot of bother, and was known for it, excelling during the Miami Riots of 1980. Different times, or maybe not so much anymore.
“I was born and raised in Miami. It was a different world. A rough time. Beautiful city but we sure had riots. I went through an awful lot in those riots. I was a young sergeant at the time. But we got through it. I’m glad that’s done.”
He keeps in touch with Mayweather, the odd phone call here and there, meeting at sports events and training camps when he was guiding the career of former four-belt world middleweight champ Jermain Taylor.
“When fighting Bernard Hopkins (with Jermain Taylor), I was training in Vegas with Jermain Taylor and I saw him there,” Burns says. “I see him at some of the basketball games and have talked to him a couple of times on the phone.
“I just let him know, keep working hard, I’m proud of him, just stay focused and keep doing what you’re doing. We talk about a couple of guys that were on the team, just check in and see how everybody’s doing.
“That’s pretty much it. He doesn’t need to hear it from me how good he is — I’ll let everybody else give him those accolades. I just want to know how he’s doing and how he’s doing personally and that he’s doing well, and that he stays grounded.”
McGregor brings something different to the table. An unpredictability, a different way of moving, an Irish heart. It’s something Burns met when he coached Duddy and before that, UFC man Alessio Sakara, an Italian who fought out of Miami, to help with his fistwork.
“My grandparents are all from Ireland, all four of them. They’re from Cork and Kerry. That’s about all I know. I have a great uncle that died at The Alamo. He came over from Ireland and, like a lot of the Irish, went and fought.
“It’s funny, in my family, we had a mixture of — and I know it was taboo — Catholic and Protestant that married each other. I believe that was unheard of. It must have been interesting way back in those days.
“I got a chance to train a kid from Ireland for a few fights, a great kid, I loved him, John Duddy,” Burns says. “We had a lot of fun, John and I. Tough kid and a good student. I wish I woulda got John when he was young, I woulda taught him this punch called ‘the jab’ (laughs). But a little later in life, we did it. He was just a great kid to work with, wonderful attitude.

“I had a chance to compete against the Irish many times with US teams and the Irish were just badass, tough guys.”
“Floyd’s patient…. It’s the bull and the matador”
His MMA experience was more complex, enjoyable but he wanted out pretty quickly as well when he didn’t feel wanted. McGregor has opted against bringing in a boxing coach, sticking with striking expert Owen Roddy and John Kavanagh, the affable jiu-jitsu specialist who guided him to the top. Sportsmen often stick to their own and McGregor, with cutman Tommy McCormack in camp, is surrounded by Dubs.
Burns says: “I enjoyed my time a lot and I’d do it again if the right guy comes along. I would have loved to have trained Conor. I’d have loved to do the boxing aspect of it with him.
“I’ve trained MMA guys to help them with their hands. It’s entirely two different sports. The striking is totally different. The balance is totally different. Everything about it is different. The way you lead with your jab hand is different. It’s just different.
“You’re not setting up the same. A lot of times, what these guys do is they throw punches with the next thing is to shoot in on their legs. I coached high-school wrestling for a lot of years and knew how to handle myself on the mat, and of course the boxing, and boxing is totally different. You’re not punching and setting in to shoot up and take somebody down, so it’s totally different.
“You need a lot more patience in boxing. So whether he made a mistake or not, I don’t know. I don’t know enough about his coach to say one (if it was a mistake not bringing in a boxing specialist coach) way or the other. If it was my guy I would make sure that he was with a guy who knew what he was doing in the boxing, and of course the other coach could complement the whole training together. But they chose not to and he might pay a price for it, and maybe he won’t.
“I enjoyed it (his own time around MMA/UFC). I only did it a couple of times. What I found was that the entourage, the guys that surrounded the mixed martial artists, they did not want a boxing guy in there so it wasn’t the most comfortable situation.
“But I thought what I brought to the table was wrestling, as a high-school wrestling coach, and the boxing, but these guys you could just sense that they did not want a boxing guy in there for their own egos and their own reasons.
“So it wasn’t a sport that I stayed in for very long. I wasn’t there to disrupt or upset anything, I was simply there to help a guy get better with his hands.
“I did not like it a whole lot though because the fraternity is very close, and as a result of that, a lot of guys that could have been great mixed-martial arts guys…they just didn’t have the hands to really become great. The little time I did it, it was fun. The fighters were great. But I thoroughly enjoyed the boxing more — it’s much more of a science.”
As for how the fight will go, Burns agrees with this writer. If McGregor lasts the 12 rounds, it’ll be one of the great sporting achievements, Irish or otherwise. As for his chance of winning?
“I’ve been around the sport long enough to know that anything can happen. You know, Floyd has dodged no one,” Burns adds.
“He’s fought the best guys out there in his division, in multiple divisions, and everybody thought ‘this guy is gonna kick his butt’, and ‘that guy is gonna kick his butt’, and it turned out to be almost embarrassing for all of these guys.
“Our friend in the Philippines (Manny Pacquiao), and a lot of the other guys that they all talked about, Floyd finds a way to not only…the bigger the fight, the better Floyd fights and the more prepared he is, the more locked-in he is.
“So this is going to be a very, very difficult fight for McGregor. He’s a tough guy. If Floyd was going into an Octagon, Floyd would be in way over his head. And this guy is walking into the boxing ring and this is a whole different jungle in itself, if you will.”
And Burns does know a thing or two about jungles, after all.
“If he does go 12, it’d be one of the greatest achievements of all time.
“Floyd’s patient…. It’s the bull and the matador. Everybody knows Conor is a bull. He’s very tough, strong and aggressive. He’s mean and hell and he can hurt you.
“But you know what, you go to Spain and you see these guys wearing the little tights and the little skinny shirts, and they weight 130lb, and they go in the arena with a 3000lb bull, and that bull charges at this little 130lb frail guy who stands and steps aside, steps to the left and steps to the right. And after that bull has done everything he can to kill this guy, the little guy in leotard and tights pulls out his sword and walks up to the bull that’s standing there and breathing so hard, he can barely move, and he stabs him and he kills him.”
Burns’ point being that, when it’s safe to do so, the matador eliminates the danger. Which is why, after a tentative few rounds, McGregor is expected to tire having never fought 12 rounds in his life. And then — be it by doctor’s order, the corner’s towel or the referee’s mercy — the fight will be over, and Mayweather will be 50–0.
Semper Fidelis, as Burns would tell you and those he’s battled alongside and trained in the days since leaving the Marine Corps. Always faithful, only this time to the sweet science against the invaders.
