Floyd says he should get credit for making the fight
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By Dan Rafael
With this fight, De La Hoya, who has generated $492 million in 17 previous pay-per-view fights, is poised to become the all-time highest-grossing attraction in PPV history. The fight against Mayweather is a slam dunk to gross more than $53 million; it could double that amount. That would send De La Hoya past No. 2 Evander Holyfield ($543 million for 14 PPV events) and No. 1 Mike Tyson ($545 million in 12 pay-per-view events), according to HBO research. "It feels pretty good, actually, to be the pay-per-view champion," De La Hoya said. "I'm going to call it the pay-per-view championship. It feels pretty good. I think the scary part would be that I think that somebody can break it in the next 20 years, maybe. I think somebody will break it." • If Mayweather wins, the obvious next fight for him -- if he doesn't stick to his plan to retire -- would be welterweight star Shane Mosley. But Mayweather dismissed the possibility, belittling Mosley and saying he wouldn't fight him. "He ain't a businessman like me," Mayweather said. "What he got in two Oscar De La Hoya fights, I'll get in one. So when you talk about who's the smarter businessman, I'm the smarter businessman." Added Mayweather, "Why would I fight a sparring partner? I don't fight sparring partners." He was referring to Mosley's selfless decision to work with De La Hoya as a sparring partner to get De La Hoya ready for Mayweather. "If Floyd Mayweather ever decides to come back in the ring, he will never fight Shane Mosley on a percentage," said Leonard Ellerbe, Mayweather's best friend and one of his advisers. "That will never happen, and you can quote me. Why would we? Shane Mosley just did 3,800 people in the Mandalay Bay [against Luis Collazo in February] after beating Oscar two times. He just did $580,000 at the gate. Shane didn't even make $2 million for his fight. He has to be able to bring something to the table. At this point in his career, he brings nothing to [the] other table. He's admitted to himself that he's a sparring partner. We're not here to talk about Shane Mosley." • Mayweather's love for cash has been illustrated on the HBO series "De La Hoya/Mayweather 24/7." But Mayweather doesn't just stack $100 bills on his kitchen table. He loves to carry huge wads of cash with him. This week, he has claimed to carry as much as $30,000. Sometimes, that can cause problems, as Mayweather explained with a story of an incident from a couple of years ago during a Christmas shopping spree. Tired of using a credit card to buy gifts, Mayweather said he brought a brown paper bag containing $170,000 in cash to the mall. When he and his crew were loading the car with the bags and boxes they had bought, someone inadvertently left the "money bag" on the sidewalk. "Somebody set the bag down because we had so many bags we were putting in the car," Mayweather said. "We put a lot of Christmas bags in the car, but not the main thing, the money bag. We didn't leave it in the store. We left it outside my car. Soon as we left, I said, 'Where's the cash at?'" At that point, they turned around and found a man holding the bag where they had left it. "The guy gave it back to us and I think we gave him like 10 grand." So, how about getting a checkbook? "I got a checkbook, but I like cash. I'll write a check. I went and got a Rolls-Royce once with a credit card." • When Mayweather won a junior welterweight belt from Arturo Gatti in June 2006, he did it in brutal fashion. Gatti barely landed any punches while Mayweather teed off on the slower Gatti at will until Gatti's corner stopped the fight after the sixth round. Scary thing is, it wasn't Mayweather near his best, he said. "I was beating him so bad, I backed off of him," Mayweather said in a stunning statement. This is a guy who goes for blood against sparring partners, so to hear him say he went easy on Gatti was quite surprising. But he insisted that is exactly what he did. "I could have gone all out. I didn't beat him with my A-game," he said. "I said if I don't back off him, I'm going to kill him, and I didn't want a man to die in the ring that night. I thought I was going to kill him, I was beating him so bad. I said in my head, 'You're gonna kill him.' So I backed off on him." • As busy as he has been running the De La Hoya-Mayweather promotion, Golden Boy Promotions CEO Richard Schaefer found time to become a United States citizen on April 26. Schaefer, who is originally from Switzerland, and his wife, Lilia, who is originally from Mexico, received U.S. citizenship at a swearing-in ceremony at Los Angeles City Hall. "We are both extremely excited to now call America home," said Schaefer, who has lived in Los Angeles for several years. • Kenny Bayless, one of the top referees in the world, will be the third man in the ring Saturday night. The judges will be stalwarts Chuck Giampa and Jerry Roth of Las Vegas and Tom Kaczmarek of New Jersey. According to Keith Kizer, executive director of the Nevada Athletic Commission, Bayless has worked one Mayweather fight in his career: Mayweather's 1996 pro debut. Bayless' last De La Hoya fight was his 2004 knockout loss to Bernard Hopkins. • If you missed any of HBO's engrossing "De La Hoya/Mayweather 24/7," the four-part documentary series that followed the fighters from the media tour through their training camps and to Las Vegas for the fight, the network will air all four episodes in a minimarathon Friday from 8 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET/PT. • How big is De La Hoya-Mayweather? There is even an official CT scanner for the fight. The Danvers, Mass.-based NeuroLogica Corp., a medical imaging company, has teamed with the Nevada State Athletic Commission to make its CereTom CT scanner available to ringside medical staff. The company is also providing a radiologist and other support staff for the scanner in case any fighter is injured and neurological scans are needed. 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