by Ron Borges

LAS VEGAS - Oscar De La Hoya thought for a long minute before he answered, wetting his lips as he considered just what to say about the man he will face Saturday night in the biggest fight in boxing in nearly a decade.

At 34, De La Hoya knows prize fighting is not a sport well served by unbridled emotion. It is not The Sweet Science, as some have labeled it, but rather a basic, brutal science that at its most elemental core centers around imposing your will on someone by keeping your emotions intact while making the other man's unravel.

That being the case, even after long months of insults directed at him from Floyd Mayweather, Jr. De La Hoya ponders before he responds to a question about his feelings toward his constantly yapping opponent. Then, after some reflection, he does what he will have to do Saturday night to win. He attacks Mayweather with savage control.

"I don't really dislike him,'' De La Hoya says of a man who has questioned his manhood and suggested he quit against Bernard Hopkins. "I dislike nobody. I just don't care for him. He is irrelevant to me.''

Nothing could hurt Mayweather more outside the ring than that. To be thought irrelevant is the ghost Mayweather has carried with for much of his life. He has spent most of his 30 years trying to overcome irrelevance within his own household and to this day his relationship with his father, the most basic one a young man has, remains unstable to the point that the father will attend this fight with two tickets given to him by De La Hoya, the fighter Floyd, Sr. trained for six years before splitting with him over De La Hoya's decision to accept his son's long-offered challenge.

To say Little Floyd had angered De La Hoya during the promotion of this fight would mean the younger man had somehow breeched his defenses, a point he refuses to concede. Yet he did get to him during the long months leading up to what may be the highest grossing non-heavyweight fight in boxing history so to say now that he is "irrelevant,'' to dismiss him in such a way, was a way of trying to break his opponent where it counts most in boxing. Deep inside his head.

"He did his job,'' De La Hoya says of Mayweather, as if he is just another of his employees. "He motivated me with all that trash talking. It got to me. It made me want to train. I wanted to punch him.''

That, of course, is what he has to want if he intends to win a fight in which he is the underdog for one of the few times in his career. He has to want to punch Floyd Mayweather, Jr. - which he dearly does - but he has to want to do more than that. He has to want to do to him what he did to his last opponent, Ricardo Mayorga, whom he destroyed first mentally and then physically. He has to want to patiently unravel him, like cloth woven on a faulty loom.

"Mayorga, I don't dislike him,'' De La Hoya said. "I don't care for him. I saw him the other day in Miami during the press tour and we shook hands. He was a different man (from the trash talker who suggested he would not only defeat De La Hoya a year ago but leave the arena with his wife, a notion he was quickly dissuaded of when De La Hoya dropped him less than a minute into the first round of what would turn out to be six one-sided rounds before the fight was stopped). Everybody has his humbling moment in life.''

De La Hoya hopes that moment comes for Mayweather on Saturday night when the talking and the posturing will finally be over. Then it will come down to what a fight always comes down to, physical dominance. But before that, there is still work to be done. Psychological work designed to remind Mayweather of what he is not. Which is boxing's Golden Boy.

Ray Leonard always believed big fights like this one are won before the first bell sounds. Certainly the hard work in the ring still has to be done but with highly skilled fighters like these two the issue often comes down to who can break the other psychologically before the fists begin to fly. Mayweather has tried to do this with endless bombast, making a cacophony of noise. De La Hoya, like Ray Leonard, works more subtly.

De La Hoya supplied Mayweather's father and his former trainer with two tickets to the fight and a hotel room at his expense after father and son had the latest in a lifelong string of falling outs last week. When he's asked about it, De La Hoya says, "Obviosuly I thought his son would take him to the fight. He didn't so it's something we had to do. Not having Floyd, Sr. there would not be right.

"I never thought he'd be in his corner. The egos are too big with Senior, Junior and (Floyd's uncle and trainer) Roger. I knew it wouldn't work. Over the years Big Floyd would belittle Roger all the time. He'd tell me he was a better trainer. That he didn't know what he was doing. I learned a lot about Junior from his father. Over the years he'd tell me, 'He's jealous of you.' He kept saying he wasn't a good guy. That he surrounded himself with bad people. Now I know it's true.''

While Mayweather has spent the past months attacking De La Hoya with a frontal assault, the 34-year old six-time world champion attacks the son where it hurts most. With the words of his own father.

Subtley of attack will be as important on Saturday night as it is this week, as De La Hoya quietly tries to dismantle his opponent without ever raising his voice. While Mayweather curses and hollers and alternates between insults and threats, De La Hoya slips, slides and then - WHACK - says, "He is irrelevant to me.'' Slips, slides and then - WHACK - hits the son with the disparaging words of his own father.

De La Hoya will need the same kind of approach when the real fight begins for he knows Mayweather is a supremely talented boxer with speed, stamina and a ferociousness born from his own self-doubts. So he feeds those doubts with soft words that land with hard results, knowing everything he says will get back to Mayweather.

He speaks with the assasin's dispassionate smile on his face. His wife of six years, Puerto Rican singer Millie Corretjer, has watched this transformation from family man and business success to fist fighter after nearly a year layoff following the victory over Mayorga with some surprise for De La Hoya is now a part-time fighter and full-time promoter, fighting only once since losing to middleweight champion Bernard Hopkins in Sept. 2004 and only eight times in the past seven years. Some of those have been fights for which he was not as fully prepared as he is today. Floyd Mayweather, Jr. is the difference between those nights and the one that is about to come for he has helped De La Hoya become again what he used to be, which is someone Millie Corretjer barely knows.

"It’s like he needs to prove something to himself, especially in this fight against Floyd Mayweather," she says. "He’s become more quiet, more focused earlier than usual."

What reason, at the age of 34, does De La Hoya have to continue to put himself through this transformation? He will have become the highest grossing fighter in pay-per-view history by Saturday night, having been involved in producing over $600 million in buys. That number exceeds the totals of even Mike Tyson and Evander Holyfield, yet he has no real need of the millions this fight will produce. De La Hoya not only has a successful promotional company that is running this event but also owns a string of Spanish-language newspapers, an office building in downtown L.A., vast real estate holdings, the first bank aimed at the Latino market and numerous other business ventures as well as being a pitchman for an array of companies. Unlike Mayweather, he has no need to fight any more except for the most elemental of reasons. He fights because on some level that is still who he is.

"Believe me, I ask myself every single day, ‘Why the hell am I doing this?''' De La Hoya said. "Why am I still boxing? I mean, look at my face (where he still had the remnant of a bruise under his right eye). In training I’ve never had a bruise before. I literally look at myself in the mirror and say, ‘What the hell are you thinking?’ But I will always have that love for the sport. I really love boxing.

"I love getting my body and mind in shape, working towards the big prize. Come May 5, when we’re in the dressing room and the butterflies are the size of lobsters and my legs are shaking and I can’t stand up because I'm so nervous, I love that feeling. I'm alive.''

Few opponents would still give De La Hoya that kind of rush but Floyd Mayweather, Jr., who is widely perceived to be the best pound for pound fighter on the planet, brings that excitement with him. He will bring it right to the edge of the ring at the soldout Grand Garden Arena but once facing those three short steps that will take them both from civilian life into a warrior's place, the excitement will fall away, replaced by a placid sense of arriving at Oscar De La Hoya's true home.

"Once I climb into the ring I don’t feel nervous any more,'' De La Hoya said. "Then it’s just focus and fight. When I’m up in that ring I feel safe. It’s like nobody can get me up in that the ring. I feel like I'm in control. In the ring I’m in my element. That’s where I belong. That's where I’ve always felt at home.''

Saturday night, Floyd Mayweather, Jr. will see a different Oscar De La Hoya than the one he has encountered at press conferences and photo shoots. Gone will be the soft voice and the controlled smirk, replaced by the hot blood of the Aztec warrior. It is an emotion he controls better than Mayweather, one he can separate from the rest of his life.
It surfaces only when he is at home. Not at home with his wife and son in Puerto Rico but when he is in a home roped off from the civilized world outside it.

"When I fought Julio Cesar Chavez (in 1996), as soon as I saw blood I wanted to see more,'' De La Hoya recalled. "It felt good to see him bleed. Then I looked across the ring after the referee stopped the fight and I saw his face covered in blood and I felt bad for him. That's my conflict. I’m a fighter but I don’t want to fight. It has to be brought out of me.''

Oscar De La Hoya smiles softly at that thought because he knows one thing is sure. On May 5 he will want to fight. Floyd Mayweather, Jr. has done his job, He's brought that out in him for at least one more time.