May 01--REPORTING FROM LAS VEGAS -- In the ring, Floyd Mayweather Jr. and Manny Pacquiao will find themselves alone with one other man: referee Kenny Bayless.
While Mayweather has said he expects to earn more than $200 million for his Saturday night bout at MGM Grand Garden Arena and Pacquiao will get somewhere near $100 million, Bayless will earn $25,000.
Bayless, considered by many the best referee in Nevada, has worked both Mayweather's Oct. 11, 1996, pro debut at Texas Station Casino in Las Vegas and his most recent bout, a Sept. 13, 2014, unanimous decision over Marcos Maidana.
Bayless' pay for Mayweather-Pacquiao is a record high, according to an official who provided the pay figures on the condition of anonymity because he is unauthorized to discuss them publicly.
His seven assignments with Pacquiao date to 2006, starting with the Filipino's third-round knockout of Erik Morales in their third meeting. He also was in the ring in Pacquiao's unanimous-decision triumph over Timothy Bradley last year.
The three judges who could determine the outcome of the fight, which oddsmakers say is 3-1 to go the distance, will earn $20,000 apiece, according to the official.
The judges will be Dave Moretti of Las Vegas, Burt A. Clements of Reno and Glenn Feldman of Avon, Conn.
Moretti, 70, is considered one of the top judges in the world. He's worked nine of Mayweather's last 14 fights and six Pacquiao bouts.
Clements, 62, has worked one Pacquiao fight, in 2004, and his scoring error in that bout cost the Filipino a split-decision triumph over Juan Manuel Marquez in the first of their four fights.
Clements quickly admitted his mistake -- not knowing that he could have awarded Pacquiao a 10-6 first-round score for posting three knockdowns in the round.
Feldman, a former sportswriter who founded the Connecticut Boxing Hall of Fame, has only worked one fight featuring Mayweather or Pacquiao, and that one ended in the third round, a Mayweather technical knockout win in 1998.
On April 18, Feldman gave junior-welterweight Lucas Matthysse a 115-113 nod in his majority decision victory over Ruslan Provodnikov in New York, a score most viewed as just.
Both fighters' promoters have said that the bout is in good hands with these judges.
"There's going to be 18,000 screaming people in that arena on [Saturday], the attention of all the media at ringside, the world watching on television," Nevada State Athletic Commission Executive Director Bob Bennett said. "I need a judge who can set all that aside and focus on the three minutes of each round.
"Doing this right is a wonderful opportunity for the sport of boxing."
