Meet the Power Brokers Who Made Mayweather vs. Pacquiao Happen

It took five-plus years. There were a handful of maddening false starts and what often appeared to be permanent stops. But ultimately, more powerful heads prevailed and put all wheels in motion toward the most lucrative boxing match in history.

It will all come together on May 2 in Las Vegas, when Floyd Mayweather Jr. and Manny Pacquiao graduate from sharing a stage to sharing a ring.

We took a break from the endless analysis of the two fighters and their styles to concoct a list of folks whose work, both behind the scenes and in front of the cameras, contributed to giving us something to talk about for the last six weeks.

Click through to take a look at who we've included, and feel free to drop in a comment/suggestion or two along the way.

Bob Arum

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Occupation: Founder and CEO of Top Rank Inc., the promotional company that worked with Mayweather for the first 10 years of his professional career and now makes fights for Pacquiao.

Sphere of influence: Bob Arum is arguably the most powerful man in the sport today. He's certainly the one in the discussion who's had the longest run—he broke into the business during Muhammad Ali's heavyweight title run in the mid-1960s—at or near the top of the power pyramid.

Biggest beefs: Mayweather bought himself out of a Top Rank contract because he'd long felt like a second fiddle to Oscar De La Hoya. He has since become the wealthiest fighter in the world. Arum landed on his feet, though, and has ridden the Pacquiao wave into history's most lucrative fight.

Leonard Ellerbe

Isaac Brekken/Associated Press

Occupation: CEO of Mayweather Promotions, a gig he worked himself into by climbing the entourage ladder after ditching his previous life as a personal trainer in the Washington, D.C., area.

Sphere of influence: These days, Leonard Ellerbe primarily serves as Mayweather's official business mouthpiece, and he's been among those credited for raising the fighter's profile with appearances on Dancing with the Stars and at the WWE's WrestleMania event.

Biggest beefs: Chances are good that if you don't like Mayweather, you don't like Ellerbe. He's rarely shy around microphones and has been engaged in verbal to-and-fro with Arum throughout the promotion, particular over a just recently settled contract issue with the MGM Grand.

Stephen Espinoza

Eric Charbonneau/Associated Press

Occupation: Formerly the lead counsel for Golden Boy Promotions, Stephen Espinoza is now the executive vice president and general manager of Showtime Sports—a job that took on a much higher profile once the network signed Mayweather to a six-fight pay-per-view contract in 2013.

Sphere of influence: He has claimed that getting the Mayweather-Pacquiao fight made was among his goals when he arrived at Showtime, and he's certainly elevated the network's standing in the sport since taking over. Signing Mayweather away from HBO was a huge move and enabled Showtime to cash in on the (for the time being, at least) most lucrative pay-per-view of all time—Mayweather vs. Canelo Alvarez.

Biggest beefs: He's at Showtime, which makes anyone at HBO a rival by definition, though the two networks will declare a temporary armistice when they deliver a joint broadcast on May 2.

Al Haymon

Jae C. Hong/Associated Press

Occupation: Al Haymon is the owner of Las Vegas-based Haymon Boxing, creator of the Premier Boxing Champions series that's put the sport on network television again and an unofficial adviser to Mayweather.

Sphere of influence: Kevin Iole of Yahoo Sports refers to him as "the most powerful man in the sport," though getting him either in a photograph or on the record for a comment is roughly akin to seeing Bigfoot out for coffee with the Loch Ness Monster. His role in the May 2 fight is equally difficult to quantify, but few would argue he's been among those responsible for Mayweather's ascension to financial superstardom.

Biggest beefs: Don't expect Haymon and Arum to take a joint vacation anytime soon, though any jabs from either the Top Rank camp or from other promoters with axes to grind will almost undoubtedly come and go without a reply. "He's not going to share his thoughts with the public for any reason," Iole wrote. "Every scrap of information he provides is on a need-to-know basis only. The president of the United States is more accountable than Haymon."

Ken Hershman

Gregory Payan/Associated Press

Occupation: Ken Hershman is president of HBO Sports, which puts him at the helm of the perceived leader in premium cable television boxing programming—a job he took after holding a similarly titled position at Showtime.

Sphere of influence: He's the holder of the purse strings for the "Network of Champions," which was Mayweather's broadcaster of choice from the early days of his career until he bolted to Showtime in 2013. HBO has recently struck back, however, pulling Alvarez back into the fold after he'd carried the Showtime flag for the 2013 bout with Mayweather.

Biggest beefs: As is the case in the opposite direction with Espinoza, his rivals by definition are those aligned with Showtime—even with the joint broadcast on the docket for May 2. He was behind the network's decision to sever ties with Golden Boy Promotions in 2013, though those fences have since been mended with the returns of Alvarez and Bernard Hopkins to HBO shows.

Floyd Mayweather Jr.

John Locher/Associated Press

Occupation: He's the five-division world champion in the ring and the de facto boss of "The Money Team," whose TMT logos are omnipresent in the fighter's entourage and throughout Las Vegas on fight nights.

Sphere of influence: Floyd Mayweather Jr. is the richest fighter in the sport's history and the world's highest-paid athlete for 2014, despite the lack of a slew of national endorsements. He's also the namesake for Mayweather Promotions, whose operations he will presumably oversee when his own in-ring days are complete.

Biggest beefs: He and Arum have been perceived as archenemies since the fighter left the promoter in 2006, though Arum insists the enmity is as much a residue of shoddy journalism as it is a product of reality. Many assumed, in fact, that their dispute would keep the fight from ever being made.

Les Moonves

Jordan Strauss/Associated Press

Occupation: Les Moonves is the president and CEO of the CBS Corporation, which owns Showtime. He's also a longtime personal friend of Arum.

Sphere of influence: Nearly everyone—including Arum—considers Moonves the most important straw that ultimately finished stirring the Mayweather-Pacquiao drink. Moonves' ability to deliver Mayweather was, according to many, the turning point.

"One of the main reasons why this deal got done, as opposed to deals in the past, was because Leslie Moonves was a part of the process," Stephen Espinoza said, according to Dan Rafael of ESPN.com. "He was deeply committed to making this deal and was someone that all parties in this negotiation really respect. He was really the catalyst for seeing this through and refused to take no for an answer from any side."

Biggest beefs: Not many. In fact, though many of the moving parts of the whole event don't necessarily get along when left to their own devices, Moonves was able to build consensus and keep the process moving forward.

"He believed that he could deliver Mayweather. He said that he had a conversation with Floyd and that he believed that we could work through a deal and get the fight made," Arum said. "And I think he stuck with it. He's a great dealmaker. And most of my negotiations with the other side were through him."

James Murren

Stephan Savoia/Associated Press

Occupation: James Murren has been the CEO and chairman of MGM Resorts International, which includes the MGM Grand and the Mirage, since 2008. The MGM Grand has hosted Mayweather's last 10 fights and will make it 11 in a row on May 2.

Sphere of influence: Serving as the home court for Mayweather has its perks. That allegiance kept the fight in Las Vegas, as opposed to other locales that were perceived as possible, like Cowboys Stadium in Arlington, Texas.

Biggest beefs: Arum has taken issue with the MGM several times over the last few years, particularly in April 2014 when Pacquiao fought a rematch with Tim Bradley there—just a few weeks before Mayweather's first match with Marcos Maidana—amid prominent Mayweather-centric signage. The promoter also alleged the MGM and Mayweather were working together as part of the recent contract issue over tickets, etc.

Manny Pacquiao

Jae C. Hong/Associated Press

Occupation: He's the winner of sanctioning body championships in seven weight classes, current holder of the WBO welterweight championship and so-called B-side to Mayweather's A-side.

Sphere of influence: Alongside a surefire Hall of Fame career in the ring, Manny Pacquiao is a congressman and a potential future president in his native Philippines. He's the global superstar who replaced Mayweather and De La Hoya when they left the Top Rank organization.

Biggest beefs: Mayweather has never been shy—at least until this promotion began—about lobbing verbal grenades in the Filipino's direction, but nearly everyone else has a positive vibe about one of the sport's perceived good guys. His willingness to finally acquiesce to Mayweather's insistence on a 60-40 pay split and USADA-orchestrated drug testing was, at the core, what got the fight made. If he'd dug in his heels, we'd probably be looking at lesser matchups for both guys next month.

Richard Plepler

Richard Shotwell/Associated Press

Occupation: The chairman and CEO of HBO, Richard Plepler rolled up his sleeves and handled the upper-management-level negotiations between CBS and his network to strike a deal for the mega-fight. He understood that enforcing HBO's exclusivity with Pacquiao would not be productive, so he elected to work quietly and effectively behind the scenes to shape the structure of the agreement to have HBO and Showtime jointly produce and distribute the pay-per-view event.

Sphere of influence: Plepler took a call out of the blue in August 2014 from Moonves, who asked if the two networks could collaborate and make Mayweather vs. Pacquiao for 2015. Plepler's response was a resounding yes.

Biggest beefs: Plepler is an accomplished negotiator who values reason and compromise. He is not steeped in boxing tradition and its bizarre rituals and policies. He does not care about old-fashioned alliances. So he needed to balance 21st-century strategies and tactics versus the realities of boxing's cold war.