“The Best Publicist”

By Michael Woods

Hey, you might want to check out this Q n A done by ex Sports Illustrated writer Jeff Pearlman, the John Rocker guy. He chatted with publicist Kelly Swanson, the hard nosed flak for Floyd Mayweather who now does work for Al Haymon's Premier Boxing Championship.

She's one who doesn't often weigh in with her personal opinions and Pearlmsn gets her to shed some light on “Money,” and opine on what makes the pugilistic wizard, now on hiatus, the best boxer of his generation, and maybe more.

Swanson is a Brooklyn resident, and has a personality better suited, I'd say, to this region than DC, where she set up shop in her ascent to be the highest profile publicist in the game. This chat shows off some those NYC-ready characteristics which propel her success.

It feels like she and Pearlman enjoy a quite cordial relationship. He writes, “You’re the best publicist I’ve ever dealt with, and it’s not even close,” so I believe her comfort level with him helped achieve an intimate tone to the chat.

This snippet from the piece is a not unreasonable summation of Mayweathers' persona:

“Yes, he has had his own personal failings that are well documented and known to everyone,” Swanson told Pearlman. “But he has also paid for those failings and is doing the best he can to not make the same mistakes again; to be a better person all around. You have to respect someone, whether you like him or not, for doing that. It’s the nature of humanity.”

Here is the whole piece.

http://lsh.re/Y06S