Floyd Mayweather Jr says he will beat Manny Pacquiao "easily" and will walk away from the biggest pay-per-view event in the history of boxing with up to $75m (£45m).
Only obduracy of the most perverse kind can scupper a mega-showdown between the new WBO welterweight champion and Mayweather some time in 2010, almost certainly in Las Vegas. But Mayweather dismissed the little Filipino's brutal stoppage of the formidable Puerto Rican Miguel Cotto in the 12th round at the MGM Grand on Saturday night as one-dimensional, even though it has been universally hailed as one of the finest ring performances in many years.
"Can Manny Pacquiao beat me?" he asked a Sky reporter afterwards. "Absolutely not. Easy work, easy fight. I don't see no versatility in Manny Pacquiao. I see just a fighter, you know, a good puncher, but just one dimension. I'm not saying Cotto wasn't a good fight. But he's been in a lot of wars. I haven't took no punishment. There's nothing cool about taking punishment."
Mayweather cast doubt on Pacquiao's willingness to fight him, a radical take on an event even boxing's most gnarled rivals would do well to sabotage. "If Pacquiao wanted it, he could get it. Come on man, I don't have to say I want to fight Pacquiao. Floyd Mayweather is the face of boxing. All roads lead to Floyd Mayweather."
Pacquiao, nonetheless, has remained silent on the subject since ripping the WBO welterweight title away from Cotto, his seventh belt at different weights – to Mayweather's five.
Whatever the opening rhetoric, Mayweather will not jeopardise a fight he knows could earn him, as he says, "$50m, $60m, $75m. Come on man, I'm not losing. I deserve a bigger piece of the pie. I've done more. I've been around the sport longer and I've been dominating longer – and nobody has beaten me yet. There's no fighter that can beat me. The world's going to go 'wow' if Floyd Mayweather gets beat. That's what everyone's looking to see. What's going on right now in the sport of boxing, they're trying to build a fighter, make a fighter that can beat me. I don't get no respect in the sport of boxing."
He poured cold water on the perception that Pacquiao deserves respect for coming up through the weights as a skinny teenager on the streets of General Santos City to beat boxing's best at so many weights, including Oscar De La Hoya, Marco Antonio Barrera and Ricky Hatton.
"Manny Pacquiao weighed 106lb when he was 16, just like Floyd Mayweather weighed 106 when he was 16. My career is fine. What's so cool, I take no punishment, no bumps, no bruises and, when my career is over, I have a job as a commentator. And I'll be a great promoter."
Mayweather has figured in some of the biggest pay-per-view fights in history. He and De La Hoya generated the biggest pile of all, $120m, in 2007. That eclipsed the $106.9m revenue from the Mike Tyson-Lennox Lewis fight in 2002. De La Hoya and Félix Trinidad raised $71.4m in 1999.
In pay-per-view numbers, De La Hoya-Mayweather tops the list with 2.15m hits, followed by the Tyson-Evander Holyfield "ear fight" in 1997, with 1.99m purchases, and De La Hoya-Trinidad's 1999 bout, with 1.4m. There are some estimates that put Mayweather-Hatton in 2008 at 1.5m, although the announced figure was 1.2m – a fact not lost on Mayweather.
After he takes care of Pacquiao, Mayweather said, he wants to fight in the UK – although he named no opponent, pointing out only that he'd heard "Ricky Hatton wants to play chess with me again".
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