When you are a 50-0 fighter with 15 world titles, lineal championships in four different weight classes, an Olympic medal, and three US Golden Gloves titles, you could probably interrupt an Oscar acceptance speech. So comedian Gary Owens never really stood a chance when Floyd Mayweather dropped in with his crew for his first show in Las Vegas.
At this point in time, Owen was a moderately famous comedian, having opened for a few famous comedians and being a part of Eddie Murphy’s Daddy Day Care. However, his reputation among the African American community was already on the rise, courtesy of featuring on BET’s Comic View.
So, in 2012, Owen is in Las Vegas at the Mandalay Bay, shooting his first comedy special. As comedian Andrew Schulz explains it, when a comic is taping a special, they are in autopilot mode. There are a million things already happening, and nobody wants anything big to interrupt them.
Unfortunately, for Owen, it wasn’t going to be the case that night. “I am on stage. It’s so loud but there’s literally in the front, two empty rows. And I am like, ‘why aren’t they filling this?‘” Owen begins telling this story of how he met Floyd Mayweather.
“This is so weird. Why aren’t they filling this up? I don’t know, Floyd has called and said, I am coming. I don’t care if there’s a special,” he’s told.
Owen then stops to remind everyone that Floyd is the champion at this point in time. Every time he shows up and fights in Vegas, he brings millions to the economy. To put it mildly, as Owen did – “Floyd runs Vegas“.
“I am on stage and I see… I am 30-40 minutes in, and a commotion happens. There are all these people., I thought a fight happened. What’s going on, and then it starts coming towards me and I go, ‘what the f**k is happening?'” he continues.
Explaining his reasons for not being able to understand or even see what’s going on, for that matter, Owen explained that Floyd was a small guy who was surrounded by huge bodyguards.
And then it struck him. “I see Floyd, and go, ‘Oh Floyd’. And then I just start talking to him and his entourage for about 15 minutes, and they kept like 5 of it in the special,” Owen added to everyone’s amusement.
It’s been 12 years since that day, but Owen still finds it funny that even though he knew Floyd was going to be there, he didn’t expect him to pop up with his entire entourage of 40 people in the middle of his set.
