Oscar De La Hoya

Floyd Mayweather Sr., replaced as Oscar De La Hoya's trainer a day earlier, said Wednesday that his $2-million demand to prepare De La Hoya to fight Floyd Mayweather Jr. was legitimate, not excessive. "Oscar told me he wasn't going to pay it," Mayweather said. "I told him, 'Find someone else, have a good day.' If you want me to help you destroy my son, you're going to pay me. And pay me well." Mayweather Sr.

There are 1.3 million reasons, all of them green and decorated with a picture of George Washington, for Freddie Roach to be thrilled at landing the job of training Oscar De La Hoya for his May 5 mega-fight against Floyd Mayweather Jr. But Roach is only excited about the chance to further his success in boxing, not the monetary measurement of that. "I'm not a money guy," says Roach, 47. He speaks Monday as he stands in the midst of the daily chaos that is his life and his gym.

The third of 11 stops on the promotional tour was over. Sure, "The World Awaits" Oscar De La Hoya's fight with Floyd Mayweather Jr. on May 5 in Las Vegas. But at the moment, De La Hoya was awaiting dinner. The boxers, hoping to boost the pay-per-view TV audience for the sold-out fight, had just completed a rousing appearance in front of about 3,000 commuters last week at Union Station in Washington, D.C., when they were pointed to a nearby restaurant. De La Hoya ordered salmon.

Oscar De La Hoya and his chief executive of Golden Boy Promotions helped lure boxer Manny Pacquiao into signing a multi-fight contract by delivering to him a suitcase stuffed with $250,000 in cash as a signing bonus at a Beverly Hills steakhouse in September, Pacquiao's trainer Freddie Roach said Wednesday. "Manny told me he wanted a signing bonus, and I relayed that to Golden Boy," Roach said. "They negotiated a deal and they gave him the signing bonus, and some of it was in cash in a suitcase."

Oscar De La Hoya was once so happy with fight promoter Bob Arum that the young boxer presented him with his prized Olympic gold medal during Arum's 65th birthday celebration at a Reno hotel ballroom. The gesture wowed the crowd. "It was a stunner, it made the night, and Bob was very emotional," said Bill Caplan, the longtime publicist for Arum's company, Top Rank, recalling the 1996 party. But that was then. Today the onetime father-son relationship between fighter and mentor is in tatters.

Undefeated Floyd Mayweather Jr. will have plenty at stake when he fights Oscar De La Hoya at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas on Saturday. Not only will Mayweather risk his unofficial title as the world's best pound-for-pound boxer, he'll also be fighting for his legacy, still a work in progress based on his lack of wins over big-name fighters. There's no bigger name in boxing than De La Hoya.

One would have to be blind to avoid seeing Oscar De La Hoya this week. His face is plastered on banners and billboards, shown over and over again on television and the Internet, featured on the covers of major magazines and splashed across newspaper sports sections across the country. Wherever he goes in preparation for Saturday night's blockbuster match against Floyd Mayweather Jr.

Floyd Mayweather Jr. has adhered to the same story since his 2006 victory over Carlos Baldomir. He has one fight left: Saturday's super-welterweight title bout against Oscar De La Hoya at the MGM Grand. "I have nothing left to prove," he said as recently as Tuesday. "I got enough money to live happy the rest of my life. You'll see. My eyes don't lie." A day later, Mayweather inserted a condition to his retirement-at-30 plan.

Floyd Mayweather Jr. doesn't think much of Oscar De La Hoya's record as a boxer. He claims that the 10-time champion's career is tainted because "when he did get the best wins of his career, they were against guys he either forced to come up in weight, or who were at the very end of their careers," Mayweather recently told reporters.

They barnstormed 11 of the country's major cities, dredged up family rifts, aimed scorn at each other, flashed cash and smiles on an HBO reality series and delivered a selling point that no real sports fan can ignore: the world's most popular fighter against the world's best pound-for-pound boxer. The injection of hype that tonight's super-welterweight title fight between Oscar De La Hoya and Floyd Mayweather Jr.