April 30--REPORTING FROM LAS VEGAS -- Floyd Mayweather says he'll make at least $200 million for Saturday's mega-bout with Manny Pacquiao. And if he makes more? Well, you won't hear it from him.
"If I make $300 million," he said Wednesday "I'm not going to tell you. So I can tell you any number."
Whatever the final take ends up being, the man whose nickname is "Money" said he won't be able to spend it all.
"When you get to this point, once you make so much money, there's nothing you can buy anymore," said Mayweather, who made $105 million last year, according to Forbes, making him the world's best-paid athlete. "A lot of times you think, 'Oh, I can get this, I can get that.' Once you get to a certain point, you can't get nothing no more."
But Mayweather will cash the checks just the same -- not because he needs the money but because Saturday's record payday is the culmination of a game plan he's been following his entire career. And part of that plan involved Mayweather's transitioning from a trash-talking braggart into a soft-spoken -- well, softer, anyway -- elder statesmen of boxing.
"It's just like chess," he said. "I make calculated moves in the ring and outside the ring. Once I got with the right team, surrounded myself with the right chess pieces, me speaking out loud, me having a personality, that's in the past.
"I'm a lot older now, a lot wiser. This fight sells itself. I don't have to do nothing. Our ultimate goal, no matter who the fighter was, was to get to this point."
The point where he'll make more for 36 minutes of work than any other athlete in history. Told that tickets for Saturday's fight were selling for more than $100,000 on the secondary market, the fighter smiled contentedly.
"Whoever bought a ticket, I love you guys," he said. "Thank you."
Read the Los Angeles Times' special edition Flipboard digital magazine Mayweather vs. Pacquiao.
