Oscar De La Hoya (38–4, 30 KOs) is the reigning World Boxing Council 154-pound champion and one of his sport’s all-time greatest attractions. Since 1995, he has fought in 17 pay-per-view bouts engendering 10.4 million purchases and $490.6 million in PPV revenue.

Floyd Mayweather Jr. (37–0, 24 KOs) is boxing’s current “poundfor-pound” king and the WBC’s 147-pound champion.

This Saturday, De La Hoya and Mayweather will do battle in Las Vegas at the MGM Grand Hotel and Casino. Their confrontation has the potential to be the most lucrative event in ring history.

Boxing’s previous record for a live gate was $16.86 million for the 1999 rematch between Lennox Lewis and Evander Holyfield. Ringside tickets for De La Hoya-Mayweather are priced at $2,000. The nosebleed seats are $350. Most of the tickets were purchased by the MGM Grand, competing casinos, and sponsors before any public sale. Others were reserved for HBO (which will televise the bout on pay-per-view) and the fighters’ respective camps. On January 27, the remaining tickets went on sale to the public and sold out within three hours. The live gate will be $19.3 million.

The bout will be seen in 176 countries. There is a $17 million marketing budget. In addition to regular pay-per-view, it will be shown at 1,200 closed-circuit locations in America. This is boxing’s Super Bowl for 2007 and the first mega-event for the sport since Lewis and Mike Tyson fought five years ago. De La Hoya is expected to be paid $30 million; Mayweather, roughly $12 million.

De La Hoya is boxing’s “Golden Boy.” Mayweather, by contrast, cultivates a “gangsta” persona that, by some accounts, is more than just image. He goes by the nickname “Pretty Boy.” That’s a tip of the hat to Charles “Pretty Boy” Floyd, a Depression-era bank robber.

Mayweather is enjoying the promotion for the May 5 fight. And he’s bringing a decidedly different vibe to the proceedings than Oscar is. On February 20 in New York (the first of 11 press conferences), Mayweather gyrated down the red-carpeted runway at the Waldorf Astoria, wearing black pants and a multicolored warm-up jacket. Then Oscar entered, looking very much like the successful businessman that he is. As De La Hoya approached, Mayweather took off his jacket. Now he had a different look. Black jeans and a black T-shirt. Seconds later, Floyd removed his shirt. His message was clear: “I’m here to fight.” In response, Oscar took off his jacket and lifted his shirt to show off his abs. But that meant, for the rest of the press conference, the Golden Boy sat at the dais with his shirt hanging out of his suit.

Since then, at press conferences, in teleconference calls, and at every other opportunity, Mayweather has been mouthing off. A sampling of “The World According to Floyd” includes:

• “Oscar is just a name. He’s just another opponent to me. This guy doesn’t pose no threat to me at all. De La Hoya’s got one style. He’s straight up and down. There’s nothing special about him at all. But he’s never seen a style like mine. I’m a fighter with special effects.”

• “There’s two things that we do know about Oscar. We know he gets tired, and we know he will lay down. He might come out fast; there are a lot of fighters that are front-runners. But there are 11 more rounds.”

• “I’m a throwback fighter. I’m always in shape. I bust my ass. I work hard. I’ve dedicated my life to boxing. You could have Bill Gates’s money, and you couldn’t buy this talent. I’ve never lost, never been down, never been hurt. Like me or not, you got to respect my fighting.”

• “I’m the best at talking trash. I’m also the best at going out there and backing it up. This ain’t ‘Rocky.’ This is real life. Everyone knows that Oscar is gonna get beat. The only question is how.”

De La Hoya has grown increasingly unhappy with Mayweather’s mouth. “I truly feel that Mayweather Jr. needs a humbling experience,” he said on a teleconference call last month. “He really is a little brat.”

“Then do something about it on May 5th,” Mayweather responded.

The odds are 9-to-5 that Mayweather will back his talk up. No one expects him to stand toe-to-toe with De La Hoya. He simply has to outbox him.

Oscar’s partisans point to the fact that this fight is a step up in class for Mayweather. De La Hoya, their thinking goes, has experience and power. He’s tougher than a lot of people give him credit for being. And Floyd is coming up in weight. Oscar found that his power didn’t carry well to 160 pounds (he couldn’t hurt Felix Sturm or Bernard Hopkins). They believe that Mayweather will suffer a similar fate and that this is an instance in which a younger smaller, faster man will be beaten by size and strength.

But Mayweather doesn’t just stick and move. He sticks, moves, and bangs. To neutralize Floyd’s speed, De La Hoya will have to attack, apply pressure, and make Mayweather fight. He must be in shape to do it for 12 full rounds. And he has to be willing to walk through fire, which means taking two or three punches on occasion to land one.

Oscar has never been acknowledged as boxing ‘s “pound-for-pound” king. A victory over Mayweather would earn him that honor, but the guess here is that he’ll be outboxed over 12 rounds.

thauser@rcn.com