I'm loving the trash-talk so far, some of Floyd's quotes are memorable, lol...
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De La Hoya, Mayweather trade barbs
Their trash-talk-filled cross-country media tour ended more than a month ago and they won't see each other in the ring for another month, but that hasn't stopped Oscar De La Hoya and Floyd Mayweather Jr. from continuing their war of words in the buildup to their highly anticipated May 5 showdown at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas.
Although junior middleweight titlist De La Hoya (38-4, 30 KOs) is training in Puerto Rico, and pound-for-pound king Mayweather (37-0, 24 KOs) is thousands of miles away in Las Vegas, they continue to stoke interest in their HBO PPV fight by showing an utter lack of respect for each other.
During recent back-to-back teleconference calls with boxing reporters, they each had their say.
Mayweather, who verbally attacked De La Hoya with abandon during the media tour, hasn't let up. When asked what he had learned about De La Hoya while on tour, Mayweather responded quickly.
"He ain't real," Mayweather said. "And you all keep believing all of them stories he be telling you all, all that media stuff he been telling you all. Oscar De La Hoya is a fake-ass fighter. And it's just like he says stuff like I don't deserve to be in the sport of boxing, and I don't deserve certain things. It's more like we all know Oscar De La Hoya is greedy. He's ungrateful and he's a brat, and HBO will tell you that."
Mayweather also attacked the way De La Hoya negotiated the fight and ripped his promotional company, Golden Boy.
"Oscar is a brat," Mayweather said. "Let me tell you what he did. First, we had a problem negotiating the money. We got the money settled. And then the dude [is] talking about what he wanted to wear. He wanted to wear Reyes gloves. I can't wear the gloves I want to wear, but he can wear the gloves he wants to wear. So he said let's put that in the contract, so I said, 'OK, no problem.'
"And then he said, 'Well I'm not fighting [below 154 pounds].' I said, 'No problem.' Then he said he wanted to choose where he wanted the fight to be at. I told him, 'No problem.' I'm telling you man, this dude is -- I'm amazed -- I mean [expletive], I don't ever want to do business with Golden Boy Promotions again. As of right now, I don't want to do business with them. You can see how the company is. That's like when Bernard Hopkins' nephew [Demetrius] fought [on March 17]. He was with Golden Boy Promotions. He fought Steve Forbes and he really got his ass kicked, and look how they gave him the fight. So, you know, you just have to watch them. They're slick. They've got tricks up their sleeve. When I talk like this, they get mad about me putting their company on blast, but to be honest, I mean they have been no different from Don King. They're no different from Bob Arum."
And when Mayweather was done attacking De La Hoya, he took a poke at Shane Mosley, a possible future opponent and De La Hoya's business partner and chief sparring partner for this fight.
"Shane Mosley is a nobody," he said, when asked about how Mosley might help in De La Hoya's training for the fight. "Shane Mosley is a sparring partner. That's what he is. I can't really talk bad about Shane because he's not his own boss. If I'm going to say anything or talk about Shane, I'm going to talk to his wife [Jin], or I'm going to talk to Oscar, because them are his bosses. So all I can say right now about Shane is Shane ain't nothing but a sparring partner."
Although De La Hoya is usually very respectful toward his opponents, he also can light them up when he is attacked, like he did before fights against Ricardo Mayorga and Fernando Vargas.
"I truly feel that Mayweather Jr. needs a humbling experience," De La Hoya said. "He really is a little brat, you know? That's just the way he comes across. I mean he's very arrogant. Obviously we were on a press tour for so many days, and he can get up on the podium and say a few nice things, and then his real side will come out. He starts talking all of this trash, about I'm nothing, and I haven't fought anybody, and this and that. It's uncalled for, it's unnecessary. I mean you would never see Tiger Woods talk bad about Jack Nicklaus. It's just something that is disrespectful and, therefore, it revs me up to really shut him up on May 5."
Before the media tour, De La Hoya said he really didn't know much about Mayweather other than what Floyd Mayweather Sr., De La Hoya's former trainer, used to tell him.
"The only thing I knew about him was what his father would tell me while we were training, you know, how he's a bad guy," De La Hoya said. "How he hangs around with bad people, and how he's a little brat, and he needs a lesson. Things like that. I would tell Floyd Sr., 'How bad can he be?' I didn't think he was that bad. But once I got on the tour with him, now I can understand what he meant."
Both fighters took part in the WBC's mandated 30-day pre-fight weight check this week. Each was within the mandated weight limit. De La Hoya checked in at 164.5 pounds and Mayweather was 152 pounds.