Curtis Jackson is a former boxer, so perhaps the stamina he showed on Thursday shouldn't have been all that surprising. Jackson, the hip hop and rap star whose stage name is 50 Cent, clearly displayed an extraordinary aptitude for his new job as a fight promoter.

Jackson stood in the middle of a sweaty boxing gym in Los Angeles, on his feet for hours, reeling off the same answers to the same questions time after time. His genius is that he has the uncanny ability to make each interviewer feel special, as if he were getting something new, different and better than the rest.

The ability to find new solutions to old problems, as well as his salesmanship, is what has made Jackson one of the most successful under-40 entrepreneurs in the world.

His sales ability and business savvy might just be the variable that finally, after more than three years of agonizing and often bizarre negotiations, brings Floyd Mayweather Jr. and Manny Pacquiao to meet in what would be the richest boxing match in history.

Pacquiao has business to take care of ahead of a potential Mayweather fight, though. On Saturday, he'll meet Juan Manuel Marquez for the fourth time in a pay-per-view bout at the MGM Grand Garden. Their first three bouts were exceptionally fast-paced and action packed, but no matter what he did, Pacquiao hasn't been able to conclusively defeat Marquez.

A win Saturday and once again talk will pick back up about if and when Pacquiao will face Mayweather.

Jackson is positioned perfectly to make the fight happen. He's been Mayweather's long-time friend, but as a boxing fan he wants to see his buddy fight Pacquiao as badly as anyone.

He started to make maneuvers toward getting the fight done more than a year ago. He finally came up with the idea of creating a promotional company with Mayweather that they were going to call TMT Promotions. Working together, Jackson thought, might be the way to get the fight made.

But when Mayweather elected not to invest his half of the money in the startup, Jackson walked away and created his own company, SMS Promotions.

Jackson signed former featherweight and super featherweight champion Yuriorkis Gamboa to a promotional deal, then quickly worked out arrangements with Top Rank CEO Bob Arum to get Gamboa onto the Saturday card featuring Pacquiao and Marquez.

"This is going to be a huge night for Gamboa, and a bigger night for boxing," Jackson said. "The kid can fight. I mean, he can fight. It's always good for boxing when you have exciting fights and that's what Gamboa's going to give."

Jackson scoffed when it was noted that all three of the fighters he signed – Gamboa, Andre Dirrell and Billy Dib – were poor ticket sellers and attracted few TV viewers.

Jackson promised to turn them into ticket sellers in short order.

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If he's able to do it, it will be a feat akin to what he pulled off last month on QVC, the home shopping channel, where in nine minutes he sold $177,000 worth of headphones.

"I just made 177,000 dollars in 9min on QVC," he wrote on Twitter. "Can some one hate on me so I can know this is real life."

The next day he was back on QVC selling those same headphones as if they were bottles of water on a hot day in Las Vegas. He put up with the inane banter from the hosts because he was making extraordinary amounts of money as they yakked about his headphones and groveled about his stardom.

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