A Filipino lens in Mayweather’s corner

MANILA, Philippines – James Dayap was sitting at home in Oxnard, Calif., pondering his next career move. It was September of 2014, more than a year since he left his job as Manny Pacquiao’s personal photographer. 

After a short stint shooting for the Robert Garcia camp, he was out of work once again. Then the phone rang.

“I didn’t know who was calling,” Dayap said of the 702 area code that popped up in his caller ID. It was Floyd Mayweather Jr.

The conversation that ensued wasn’t like anything that most people will ever experience. Then again, few can relate to having the highest earning athlete in the world calling them out of the blue.

“Hey, I need you to pack all your things, you’re gonna move to Las Vegas, you’re gonna be my videographer,” Dayap recalls of that conversation. “Do you have your passport? Because we’re gonna go to Europe tomorrow.”

With camera in hand, Dayap boarded a private plane with Mayweather and The Money Team to France on his first day of work.  

Dayap had known for years that he’d be involved in the Mayweather vs Pacquiao fight, which after years of delay will take place May 2 in Las Vegas. He just couldn’t have imagined which side he’d be working for.

Dayap, 28, grew up in the city of Stockton in Northern California. He was born to a mother from the Philippine province of Ilocos Sur and a father from Zambales. From ages 8-16, his career was in front of the camera, doing commercials for CitiBank, Pepsi and Hewlet Packard, and appearing in an episode of Nash Bridges.

While studying at the Academy of Art University in San Francisco, Dayap would make occasional visits to shoot Pacquiao’s training camps, beginning in 2008 with the Ricky Hatton fight. He was offered a job shooting videos for Pacquiao’s website just before graduating in 2010.

 

The Filipino-American spoke no Tagalog when he arrived in the Philippines to begin shooting, but soon became fluent. He became close friends with Pacquiao, and was a mainstay in training for many of his biggest matches. When he’d have quarrels with other members of the camp, he says, Pacquiao would stand up for him.

But that changed as the years progressed, Dayap claims.

“It started off like me and Manny were best friends. I guess like everything, everything comes to an end,” said Dayap.

Dayap left the Pacquiao camp shortly before strength and conditioning coach Alex Ariza, whom Dayap became close friends with, following Pacquiao’s knockout loss in the fourth Juan Manuel Marquez fight.

Move to Rios camp

Shortly after, Ariza was offered a job with the camp of Robert Garcia in Oxnard, Calif., where he’d work with Brandon Rios as he prepared to fight Pacquiao in November of 2013. Ariza remembered his friend Dayap, who soon joined the team.

Dayap said Pacquiao attempted to contact him a while after he left his camp, but said he was “far gone” at that point, working with Rios. He ran into Pacquiao in Macau, and says there was “no bad blood.”

“He asked me if I still read the Bible,” Dayap remembers. “It was a sad feeling leaving Team Pacquiao because it was one of the biggest parts of my career so far, but I have to give all things to Manny Pacquiao because now I’m in one of the best positions of my life.”

Dayap likens working against Pacquiao, a hero in his ancestral hometown, as being similar to an athlete playing against a former team.

“I look at it like the NBA. My good friend Isaiah Thomas was playing for the Phoenix Suns, now he’s playing for the Boston Celtics. You’re gonna switch teams and play against your former teams in sports and in boxing it’s no different.”

He isn’t the only Filipino in Mayweather’s camp. Marikit “Kitchie” Laurico, who was born and raised in the Philippines until age 11, is his personal assistant.

The Money Team’s videographer

By 3 pm., all members of the Mayweather team are present at the Mayweather Boxing Club on Schiff Drive in Las Vegas. Mayweather usually arrives at around 3:15. He’ll then change, select a color scheme from 30 different pairs of gloves, protective cups and headgear.

“It’s kind of like picking an outfit, he gets excited for it,” Dayap says.

Currently, Dayap is shooting many of the videos that appear on Mayweather’s social media channels, including all of the ones on his Instagram account. He’s also shooting a documentary on Mayweather’s life and sharing footage with Showtime.

 

Mayweather has said in televised interviews that Dayap has become one of his closest friends. Dayap feels that Mayweather’s personality is often misinterpreted by the public. 

“A lot of people portray him as the bad guy, and he has accepted that as an entertainer, but Floyd Mayweather Jr. as a person, a friend? One of the greatest, respectful people you will ever meet in your life.

“He’s always asking about everyone’s situations and family, reflecting what he learns from your life in your pay.”

Earning the trust of Mayweather was a gradual process, he says. Initially, Dayap began showing up with Ariza, whom Mayweather had hired to do conditioning work with. He had also been friends with The Money Team’s official DJ, DJ Jay Bling.

“I asked his permission if I could bring my camera to the gym and record a little bit and I’ll have something to him as soon as possible. Later on that night I had something edited for him right away. He was impressed by it. He was like ‘OK, you know what you’re doing. I see you.’”

“In fact, I didn’t have to pressure him to look at what I was working on. He saw me sitting on my laptop and he says ‘I see you there, I know you have something for me.’” 

It’s not surprising that Dayap sees a victory for his current employer. He reasons that the fight will come down to Mayweather being more hard-working in the gym than Pacquiao, whom he says had stopped training as diligently as he had during his peak.

That, along with his mental toughness, will be Mayweather’s biggest advantage, Dayap feels.

“Floyd Mayweather is the hardest working athlete I’ve ever seen in my entire life. I can fire myself from his team, be disconnected and have him do something bad to me and I’ll still say the same thing. He trains like he’s going to make his first paycheck.

“I didn’t see Manny training in the ways he used to, I didn’t see him doing the track work. I didn’t see him doing the extra strength and conditioning that he used. He quit a lot of that. I watched him go from doing it, to doing it a little bit to not doing it at all.

“It’s no disrespect to Manny, he’s always gonna come hard and try his best. He’ll come in there and he’ll go all out. I don’t think it goes past 4 rounds.” – Rappler.com