Golden Boy Vs. Pretty Boy

Oscar De La Hoya, the most acclaimed boxer of his era, has a loving family and a budding business empire. He needs one more victory to gild his Hall of Fame career--and wants one more whopping payday

Floyd Mayweather Jr. , the best pound-for-pound fighter on earth, has a chaotic family, an impish sense of humor and a willingness to play the bad guy. What he craves now is the world's recognition

IN A LAS VEGAS gym, far from the boardrooms, Floyd Mayweather Jr. chops at a heavy bag, slowly circling it, punch by punch. "I like [whomp!] having [whomp!] $10,000 [whomp!] in my [whomp!] pocket." His personal videographer, who has eight years' worth of film to edit so far, revolves with him, trying to keep out of the way of Mayweather's personal photographer, who is in similar orbit. "I like [whomp!] having a [whomp!] cook [whomp!]. I like [whomp!] having [whomp!] a driver." Two assigned punch counters (one is counting by hand--"seven, eight, nine, 2,000!"--the other clicking on a small device for backup) move with him, adding to the effect of a small but needlessly complicated planetary system. Mayweather chops away, narrating his lifestyle, as if his work here requires explanation. "I like [whomp!] having [whomp!] a big house." The entourage shuffles along in cycloid congestion, documenting and affirming, until Mayweather suddenly drops his arms, not so much because they are tired as because he has begun to repeat himself. Above all, it seems, he likes having (whomp!) $10,000 in his pocket. Everyone is pleased with the drill, clapping and whistling. The man with the clicker shows me the count: 6,261. I remember now that Mayweather had, altogether spontaneously, set out to "crack off" 1,000 straight punches, to the delight and astonishment of the crowd gathered near the ring. He has (whomp!) overshot.

As he moves off, a dozen people trailing in his gravitational wake, I marvel at such wonderful desperation. You see this only at the highest levels of performance. Mayweather's drive is so deep-seated that at first it's hard to see the doubt that inspires him, and he tends to come off as heedless, irrepressible and, above all, childish. He never seems at work, but rather at play. In fact, the day's training is in jeopardy when somebody produces a giant jar of Twizzlers. The camp has taken on Mayweather's attention-deficit persona and is impossible to keep on track for very long. Everyone dives into the jar. Crazy. How much is at stake here? How many hundreds of millions? Then again, didn't Mayweather, at 3 a.m. this very day, spring upright in bed and send out a call to gather everybody at the gym? I imagine that gloomy phone tree. It was, however, by no means the first time that the gang had assembled in the Nevada moonlight. Indeed, like firefighters wired to answer alarms, they do it all the time, only these men are chronically attuned to whim.

If Mayweather is truly desperate--and nothing else explains his fanaticism--this is good news back in the boardrooms. His fight with Oscar De La Hoya on Saturday night at the MGM Grand in Vegas will probably be boxing's last gasp, surely the last bout that can produce anything like coast-to-coast appeal or, let's say, two million pay-per-view buys. Unless De La Hoya is fighting, which has been seldom of late and is about to become never, the sport exists on the fringes, particularly in the U.S. The lower weight classes are dominated by Hispanic fighters, and their fights, dramatic as they might be, are marketed almost exclusively in the West, Southwest and some big cities elsewhere. The heavyweight division, which traditionally galvanized the nation, is similarly dominated by foreign fighters, but with the added disadvantage that they're not very good.

In short, De La Hoya-- Mayweather just might be boxing's last megafight, the last event of its kind, the last time a bout features two widely known athletes and is a topic of national interest. There will be boxing, and lots of it will be quite good, but there may never again be a time when boxing penetrates this country's indifference and causes a viral, all-consuming hubbub.

The reasons for boxing's decline, or at least its transition to a specialty sport, have been outlined in these pages before. The Olympics, once a springboard to stardom, no longer provide boxing any exposure in this country. It's been a long time, perhaps since De La Hoya won his gold medal in Barcelona in 1992, that kids in this country could be goaded into a gym with the promise of glory. Globalization, which ought to be good for boxing, a traditional melting pot, has instead turned it into a nightmare of competing ethnicities, with niche marketing now the norm.

ON TOP of all this, there has been the sudden and surprising emergence of mixed martial arts. The Ultimate Fighting Championship, which has been selling out Las Vegas arenas for several years now, is lately making big bucks with its own pay-per-view shows. It skews much younger, imbuing Gen Xers with an appreciation of leg sweeps instead of left hooks. Boxing's demographic is increasingly made up of people who eat early-bird specials and wonder what e-mail is. And it will get only worse. "It's a bit like horse racing," says Marc Ratner, longtime executive director of the Nevada State Athletic Commission, which oversees boxing in the state, "and you wonder about that." (Indeed. Ratner recently switched sides and went to work for the UFC.) Saturday night's fight will not change this but will instead represent something of a last hurrah. The riches this bout will produce (the $19 million gate, the potential $100 million PPV haul) will most likely not be matched. Not on one night, anyway.

In the boardrooms there seems to be a reluctant recognition of this. While old boxing hands argue that the sport is merely in a lull--"Boxing has gone through ebbs and flows in its history," says HBO Sports president Ross Greenburg, whose network, long among the sport's biggest boosters, is essentially promoting the fight and televising it on PPV--there is nevertheless a sense of urgency. Blessed with two remarkable fighters, terrific subplots and a looming deadline of De La Hoya's expected retirement, HBO (which, like SI, is owned by Time Warner) has pulled out all the stops. And that includes foisting an hourlong PowerPoint presentation on a cadre of bewildered boxing writers.

Basically, according to the slide show, everybody's doing a lot of stuff. Here's some of it: As the promoter of record, De La Hoya's company, Golden Boy, leased a pair of Gulfstream jets to ferry the fighters on a nine-day, 11-city tour. The stopovers served to remind the cable-ready universe that the 34-year-old De La Hoya, only sporadically active (or successful) over the last several years, had regained his appetite, his nerve and his megasmile. Also that Mayweather, 30, undefeated and a champion for a decade, was not so intimidated by moving up from welterweight to challenge De La Hoya, the WBC champion, at this new weight of 154. "Golden Girl," Mayweather called him.