Meet The Nigerian Man Who Sold 39 Cars To Floyd May Weather Junior

Los Angeles exotic-car dealer Obi Okeke was sound asleep when his phone rang one day at 3 a.m. last year.

It was Floyd Mayweather.

The undefeated welterweight champ had a mission for his trusted dealer: Have a Bugatti Veyron sitting in the driveway of his Las Vegas mansion in 12 hours.

It was time for Dr. Bugatti, as Okeke is sometimes called, to perform a miracle.

So Okeke jumped in the shower and headed to Fusion Luxury Motors, the Chatsworth, Calif., store he opened in 2012 and co-owns. He checked his notes, hopped on a plane, secured the car and drove it to Mayweather himself.

And he did it in 11 hours.

Okeke born in Nigeria  to a Nigerian father and an American mother migrated to the United States in ... due to the effects of the civil war.

He started his career as a Chevrolet dealer in 1987 and eventually moved on to manage stores for Mercedes-Benz, Lexus, BMW, Ferrari and Maserati before he started his own.

Okeke, 53, talks about him self and his relationship with floyd

Okeke:

 My father is from Nigeria; my mother is from Ohio. I was born in Nigeria. My parents have been married for 57 years. When I was a kid, Nigeria had a civil war, so we escaped from Nigeria as refugees [to Ohio], just my mom and the kids. Then we went back to Nigeria. My parents weren't crazy about the school system. My mom’s best friend was in charge of Swissair for western Africa, so they shipped me off to Switzerland.

My parents sent me to school in Switzerland as a young child, so I’ve always been very close to the European cars. And that’s why I was with Volkswagen. I tried to get a job at BMW and Mercedes, but nobody would hire me in L.A., so I just took a job with Lexus. And then from Lexus to BMW, Mercedes, Ferrari, Maserati.

Meeting with Mayweather:

My meeting with Floyd was spontaneous. I tag him an early caller. He called me at 3 one morning and that was the beginning of his early morning calls continuously coming for six weeks. This was Bugatti No. 2. The second Bugatti I sold him, and he wanted it in 12 hours. This was approximately a year ago [in the lead-up to the first Marcos Maidana fight] because he wanted the car to drive to the gym that day. He wanted a different Bugatti to drive to the gym.

He will call me on cars that are $500,000 and up. $1 million, $2 million, $3 million, that’s when I’ll get the call. I sold him a lot of [Rolls-Royces], and I sold him a lot of Bentleys. I don’t know if a franchised dealer is willing to do what I do. I don’t know if a franchised dealer is going to be able to take the phone calls in the middle of the night. I don’t know if they’re going to be able to open up their showroom in the middle of the night for him.

My relationship with Floyd is basically on business grounds.