Floyd Mayweather Sr. eager to get son back in gym, stresses body work vs. Manny Pacquiao

Floyd Mayweather Sr. will spew 10 weeks of verbal bravado about his son's May 2 showdown with Manny Pacquiao, but the trainer knows it is the fight of all their lives.

Mayweather-Pacquiao, after five years of balky talks, finally is scheduled to happen this spring at MGM Grand in Las Vegas.

"I don't think the fight has lost nothing," Mayweather Sr. said Saturday. "I think the fight will be as big as it ever was going to be, because you know what? If people anywhere are talking about anything on the planet, it's the fight. That's what they're talking about. Everybody is talking about it.

"My phone has not stopped ringing today. It's true. My phone woke me up this morning. A whole bunch of good is going to come out of this fight. It's going to be a good thing to see."

Mayweather-Pacquiao widely is projected to be the richest fight in history, and projects as one of the rarest of generation-defining boxing events, along with the likes of Sugar Ray Leonard-Marvelous Marvin Hagler in 1987, Muhammad Ali-Joe Frazier I in 1971, and the most historically significant boxing event ever, Joe Louis-Max Schmeling II in 1938.

The welterweight unification bout was announced Friday.

Details have not been announced, but pay-per-view is expected to cost $100 including high-definition tack-ons, and ringside tickets are expected to run around $5,000 -- if you have the contacts to get any before the set-asides and resell market drive prices higher.

Mayweather Sr. offered the predictable prediction that his son will knock out Pacquiao, though neither fighter has scored an unsullied knockout in more than five years.

 He did offer some hints as to the strategy against the speedy, heavy-handed Pacquiao.
"If you've ever seen Pacquiao fight, against everybody, you never see nobody going to his body -- you never see nobody going to his body," he said. "So my thing would be is to tell Floyd, hit him with the straight right hand and left hook, and then go back to the body.

"A southpaw is definitely geared to be hit with right hands. I'm going to say that, along with the body work, it's going to be a good right hand and a left hook that's going to put him down."

Pound-for-pound king Mayweather (47-0, 26 KOs) risks his pristine legacy against Pacquiao (57-5-2, 38 KOs) -- but if he hadn't, it wouldn't have been pristine.

Mayweather Sr. said the fight will be equivalent to "just a good fighter sparring in the gym, that's all."

"I know one thing, I know every move that Pacquiao does," he said. "That ain't no problem. He'll jump in with the jab, and when he jumps in with the jab, he ain't going to throw nothing behind it. He only throws one or two punches. When he jabs, because he jabs with his right hand, Floyd can pick it, or slide and dig to his body. There's all kinds of ways you can do things."

Though there are several pre-fight details to work out and training probably won't begin for a few more days, Mayweather Sr. said he would prefer it to begin this week for the biggest fight in a boxing-immersed family's history.

"It's time to get down to business," he said. "Don't cheat yourself or beat yourself, you understand?"