Golden Boy, Pretty Boy ready to rumble

THERE IS A "Fight of the Year" every year.

The designation goes to a bout that is acknowledged as having been the most exciting and entertaining in a specific 52-week period. The top fight of 2006, as voted by the membership of the Boxing Writers Association of America, was a slugfest in France on March 18 between Somsak Sithchatchawal and Mahyar Monshipour, a couple of little guys most people in this country have never heard of.

A "Fight of the Century" is an entirely different animal. For one thing, boxing events important enough to be hyped as such happen maybe once or twice a decade; for another, they frequently are not as action-packed as fans would prefer. The lead-in to the biggest fights is more about the marketing and buzz that feed the inordinately high expectations of a public that has been promised everything and demands nothing less.

Yesterday morning, at the Liacouras Center, the traveling band assembled to trumpet the May 5 pay-per-view matchup of the "Golden Boy," Oscar De La Hoya, and "Pretty Boy" Floyd Mayweather Jr. rolled into Philadelphia (the second stop on a 9-day, 11-city press tour) with all manner of statistics to back up the assertion that this will be the gaudiest, glitziest prizefight ever.

"We have a megafight on our hands here," said HBO PPV chief Mark Taffet. "There is simply nothing like it in sports. A sold-out arena [the MGM Grand in Las Vegas], the bright lights of The Strip, a huge, worldwide TV audience . . . when these fighters walk out of their locker rooms and down the aisle to the ring, it's a magical moment. It's like nothing else matters."

Now it is up to De La Hoya (38-4, 30 KOs), who will be defending his WBC super welterweight championship, and Mayweather (37-0, 24 KOs), widely hailed as boxing's pound-for-pound best, to actually deliver the goods. And each fighter insists that, this time, fight night won't prove a letdown for the spectators in their $2,000 ringside seats or the folks at home who shell out $54.95 for a PPV subscription.

"Believe me, I'm going to make it Fight of the Year. I'm going to make it Fight of the Century," vowed the 34-year-old De La Hoya, who could earn $40 million for his night's work if the most optimistic of financial projections is realized. "I'm going to make Floyd feel pain."

Countered Mayweather, 30, who also will snag a career-best eight-figure payday: "A fighter like me comes around once in a lifetime. You could have Bill Gates' money and you couldn't buy [my] talent. When all is said and done, they're going to say that Floyd Mayweather was the best fighter ever to put on a pair of gloves."

De La Hoya and Mayweather, who possess ring talent nearly as immense as their egos, have inexorably moved toward this moment for years, since Mayweather's estranged father, Floyd Mayweather Sr., became De La Hoya's trainer in 2001. At that time, the lure was man-bites-dog; would Floyd Sr. actually train someone to help defeat his own son?

That curious angle dissipated when De La Hoya recently fired the senior Mayweather in favor of Freddie Roach. But although the intrigue of father-vs.-son no longer exists, which could have the effect of suppressing the revenue streams somewhat, De La Hoya and Mayweather have made up for it by engaging in the sort of war of words that are standard for every can't-miss fight.

Mayweather threw down the gauntlet by suggesting that De La Hoya "took a dive" in his Sept. 18, 2004, knockout loss to Bernard Hopkins. De La Hoya responded by questioning Mayweather's punching power, saying that the Grand Rapids, Mich., native "can't break an egg."

Not surprisingly, there was plenty of posturing yesterday, including the obligatory nose-to-nose staredown.

De La Hoya, the highest-grossing non-heavyweight in boxing history (his 17 previous PPV bouts on HBO generated a staggering 10.5 million buys and $490 million), said he is continuing his career not so much for the money as for the challenges posed by the likes of Mayweather.

"I'm no [Arturo] Gatti. I'm no [Carlos] Baldomir," De La Hoya said, naming two recent opponents dominated by Mayweather. "He's facing Oscar De La Hoya.

"Why did I take this fight? I didn't have to. But that's just who I am. It's in my nature to fight the best. My motivation is to make history."

The same might be said of Mayweather, who harbors a grudge toward De La Hoya because he believes he was given short shrift by Bob Arum, who used to promote both fighters.

"I took the hard road," Mayweather said. "I came from the darkness into the light. They kept me in the dark for so long. Bob Arum kept me in the dark. He always gave a higher priority to Oscar.

"Well, I'm not in the dark any longer. Oscar says I can't crack an egg. Twenty-four out of 37 eggs got cracked. Through rain, sleet, snow or hell, I know how to win. I was born to be a fighter."

So does De La Hoya-Mayweather have a benchmark relevance to compare with, say, Jack Johnson-Jim Jeffries, Joe Louis-Max Schmeling II, Muhammad Ali-Joe Frazier I or Sugar Ray Leonard-Thomas Hearns I?

Richard Schaefer, CEO of Golden Boy Promotions, believes that, from a bottom-line standpoint, De La Hoya-Mayweather can match and possibly exceed the biggest fight of the 2000s to date, which paired heavyweights Lennox Lewis and Mike Tyson in 2002. That much-anticipated showdown generated 1.9 million pay-per-view buys and a record $112 million.

"In the months ahead," Schaefer said, "whatever you watch, whatever you read, whatever you listen to, whatever you log on to, wherever you eat, exercise, play or shop, everyone will know the Golden Boy and Pretty Boy are going to get it on May 5." *