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Floyd Mayweather is now worth over $300 million. Here's who first saw his potential

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Floyd Mayweather Jr.
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Floyd Mayweather Jr., 40, is known for his braggadocious personality and devil-may-care attitude. But the undefeated boxer has come a long way from his humble beginnings in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and he owes it all to one person: his grandmother.

"I think my grandmother saw my potential first," Mayweather tells the New York Times in 2006. "When I was young, I told her, 'I think I should get a job.' She said, 'No, just keep boxing.'" And that he did.

On Saturday, the elite boxer will take on UFC fighter Conor McGregor for what has been dubbed the "Fight of the Century."

The cheapest ticket is now available for $1,335, according to CNBC, and the boxing match will likely bring in over $500 million in revenue.

In fact, the Los Angeles Times reports that "Mayweather will earn the lion's share of the purse and pay-per-view money," adding to his $300 million estimated net worth, according to Forbes.

Floyd Mayweather Jr. and Conor McGregor trash talk ahead of their Aug. 26 fight in Las Vegas.

Mayweather's success is a far cry from the poverty, drugs and crime he grew up in as a child.

"When I was about eight or nine... we were seven deep in a one bedroom, and sometimes we didn't have electricity," Mayweather recalls in the book "Money: The Life and Fast Times of Floyd Mayweather."

"No heat, no water, no nothing. Nothing. I basically raised myself," he says. His father sold drugs and was eventually incarcerated and his mother was a heavy drug user, he says, so his grandmother raised him.

"When people see what I have now, they have no idea of where I came from," Mayweather writes, adding that his grandmother did the best she could. He eventually quit high school so he could provide for his family.

Yet even with his ongoing struggles, Mayweather continued to train daily. He developed quickly as a fighter, and the rest, as we know, is history.

The boxer, who is now a five-division world champion with a record of 49 wins and zero losses, is hoping to add another win, plus a few million dollars, to his name after this weekend's match.

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