A father known as Papa Merciless, an infant doubling as a human shield and parents hiding
not only crimes…but a secret sister as well!
Stay tuned to learn about athletes who couldn't stand their parents.
Todd Marinovich was just as much of a household name during his high school career as he was
during his professional one.
The California-born quarterback was profiled in Sports Illustrated back in 1988.
They wrote about his talent, sure, but also focused on the intense training regimen his
father had him on since he was an infant.
According to Esquire, Todd's father, Marv Marinovich, studied Eastern Bloc training
methods and became one of the NFL's first strength and conditioning coaches.
When his son was born in 1969, the football-obsessed father had one goal — making Todd the best
quarterback in football history.
He started early, teaching the baby to do pushups and stand on a balance beam before
he could walk.
As the younger Marinovich grew up, there was no semblance of a normal childhood, just endless
practice and appointments with a team of experts.
Todd's early years were so intense that Sports Illustrated dubbed him "America's first test-tube
athlete," though his eventual professional career left much to be desired.
This insane pressure eventually drove a wedge between father and son, and sent Todd down
a path of drug and alcohol addiction.
However, the two seem to have reconciled sometime between Todd's exit from professional sports
in 2001 and Marv's death in 2020.
Arguably the most dominant boxer in the sport's history, Floyd Mayweather Jr. did not have
an easy time of it growing up.
According to stories told to The Los Angeles Times, Mayweather's mother was an unreliable
drug addict, and his father, Floyd Mayweather Sr, was a former boxer and a volatile drug
dealer who allegedly once used his infant son as a shield in a gunfight.
Even with the aggressive and unrelenting approach Mayweather Sr. had toward his son's training,
he was able to remain in his son's good graces until 2000, when Mayweather Jr. fired his
dad as both his manager and trainer.
According to Bleacher Report, the dismissal was due to Mayweather Sr.'s impossible expectations
of perfection and Mayweather Jr.'s desire to train with his more relaxed uncle, Roger Mayweather.
After that initial spat, the father and son had an on-again-off-again relationship that
almost ended for good in 2011, when an argument between them captured by HBO cameras nearly
came to blows.
"Our training camp is fine — we undefeated, and we been undefeated, we gonna stay undefeated.
Our training camp is OK."
"You were undefeated when you started with your daddy."
However, by the time of Mayweather Jr.'s retirement in 2017, undefeated and a multi-millionaire,
he had reconciled with his pops.
Tennis legend Andre Agassi won eight Grand Slam titles and an Olympic gold medal during
his career, but despite all his success, Andre wrote in his 2009 autobiography "Open" that
he passionately hated his sport.
Why?
Because of his intense and often abusive father.
Mike Agassi was Andre's first coach.
He required his son to hit 2,500 balls a day as an elementary schooler and developed the
youngster’s speed, in an attempt to ensure he had enough energy to play for hours on end.
After leaving school as a high school freshman to turn pro, Andre became arguably the most
recognizable face in tennis, despite his deep dislike of the sport.
The situation led to an estrangement between father and son, and Andre dropped his father
as his coach.
The elder Agassi never apologized for his over-the-top antics, only admitting in an
interview with an Italian-language newspaper that he was, quote, "a tyrant, hard and severe."
Somehow, the father and son repaired their troubled relationship and had fully reconciled
before Mike's death in 2021.
A tennis legend in her own right, Andre Agassi's wife, Steffi Graf, had difficulties with her own father.
Peter Graf was Steffi's coach and manager, and began training his daughter before she
was old enough to enroll in school.
When she was three, Peter gave Steffi a sawed-off racket and began volleying balls to her over
the back of the couch.
Only after she hit 25 in a row would she be rewarded.
His coaching style got even more extreme over the following years and took an abusive turn.
According to The New York Times, Peter would often slap Steffi if she missed a shot or
didn't complete a move to his liking.
At the time, his violent actions weren't generally known, and outwardly Steffi maintained that
her dad was an excellent coach, with her record of numerous wins and titles serving as some
semblance of proof.
But everything changed in 1997, when Peter was convicted of evading taxes on his daughter's
income, owing about $7.4 million.
Steffi cut off contact with her father, dropped him as a manager, and quit tennis altogether
just two years later.
Eventually, she reconciled with “Papa Merciless,” as her father had been nicknamed, and they
were in regular contact when Peter died in 2013.
Even by the particularly brutal standards of gymnastics, 1996 Olympic gold medalist
Dominique Moceanu had a rough experience.
The 14-year-old made history at the Atlanta Games when she became the youngest U.S. gymnast
to ever win that top honor.
According to an interview with NPR, however, she wasn't fully able to enjoy the moment,
as she was worried that her domineering parents would be upset that she biffed both of her vault landings.
Apparently, her fears were far from unfounded, as she claimed in the interview that her father
had a history of being abusive, getting physical with her when he felt she wasn't training
hard enough or had put on weight, even in front of other people.
Two years after the Olympic Games, Moceanu filed for emancipation.
Shortly after that, she sued her parents for mismanaging her earnings and then filed for
a restraining order when they, angered by her bid for independence, began following
and threatening her.
Things undoubtedly got even more complicated between the family members when, in the early
2000s, Moceanu discovered she had a younger sister who had been born without legs that
her parents had never told her about.
"I had to, you know, confront my mom and dad and say 'look, is this true?'
Did you give up a baby girl for adoption in 1987?"
Her father died in 2008, and while the two were in communication, there's no official
word on whether or not they had fully reconciled.
Legendary boxer Roy Jones Jr. is the oldest of five kids and the family's only son, so
his father, Roy Jones Sr., pinned all of his own unrealized athletic dreams on the youngster
and began sparring with him when he was just five or six.
According to Jones Jr., his father was relentless, completely unforgiving, and not afraid to
get physical, even going so far as to hit his young son with a plastic pipe when he
missed a jab.
Things were so intense that Jones Jr. admitted to Sports Illustrated that he'd considered
killing himself just to get away from his dominating dad, saying —
"After a while, I didn't care about getting hurt or dying.
I was in pain [...] I was so scared of my father."
For his part, Jones Sr. openly admitted to terrorizing his athletic son, telling The
New York Times —
"To be a kingpin takes being hard.
I made [him] train under pressure.
[…] Any mistake, I was right there."
Eventually, it all got to be too much, and by 1992, the boxer had fired his father as
his coach and manager.
As far as we can tell, the two men never reconciled.
After Prince Fielder followed in his father's footsteps of playing major league baseball,
it seemed the shared experience would only bring the elder Cecil and young Prince even
closer together.
As it turns out, that couldn't have been farther from the truth.
Despite having a close relationship for much of Prince's early life, things between the
two Fielders began to unravel in 2004 when Prince's parents began their divorce proceedings.
In the process, it was revealed that the family was struggling financially and had a number
of creditors chasing them down for large sums of money.
The in-court fighting over who was at fault for the family's predicament got ugly, and
Prince took his mother's side, accusing his dad of a gambling addiction.
Things took an even uglier turn when Prince accused Cecil of taking $200,000 from his
signing bonus without permission.
The pair's relationship was so strained that Prince once told the Detroit News that his
father was dead to him.
It took a long time for the two men to work things out, but in 2015, when Prince retired,
he was on speaking terms with his dad once again.
Dennis Rodman was one of the most dominant power forwards in NBA history, but despite
his incredible on-the-court talent, Dennis was perhaps even more well-known for his off-the-court antics.
"To get the most out of him on the court, you had to give him some rope — and they
gave him a lot of rope."
Many folks attribute his wild behavior to his troubled childhood.
Dennis was raised by a single mom in an impoverished neighborhood in Dallas after his father left
when he was just three.
Dennis and his father, the aptly named Philander Rodman, essentially had no relationship after
that, as the elder Rodman was too busy having an additional 29 children by 16 women.
For 42 years, Dennis had zero contact with his father, but ESPN reported that they met
up for 3 minutes at an exhibition game in the Philippines in 2012.
Dennis' dislike for his father is well known.
In his autobiography, "Bad As I Wanna Be," Rodman wrote —
"I just look at it like this: Some man brought me into this world.
That doesn't mean I have a father."
Manny Pacquiao has had an incredibly successful career, and his wildly successful stats have
led him to be widely regarded as one of the best small boxers of all time.
But all of his success may not have happened if he hadn't had such a horrible father.
Pacquiao grew up dirt poor in the Philippines, with two parents who weren't all that concerned
with his well-being.
Craving affection, the youngster adopted a stray dog that would become his constant,
loving companion.
According to the prizefighter, his father came home drunk late one night, got angry
with his juvenile son, and then killed and ate his pet.
The next day, Pacquiao left home, running away to Manila, where he'd discover his love
of boxing.
In his autobiography, Pacquiao wrote of the incident —
"To a young boy, that was unforgivable — it was stealing something that I loved, which
is far more terrible than stealing money."
His father denied these vile actions, but there was undoubtedly a wedge between the
pair, and for years Pacquiao had nothing to do with his dad.
Eventually, the men reconciled, and Rosalio Pacquiao was even spotted ringside at a number
of the boxer's later fights.
If you or someone you know may be the victim of child abuse, please contact the Childhelp
National Child Abuse Hotline at 1-800-4-A-Child (1-800-422-4453) or contact their live chat services.