In Mayweather-Pacquiao Buildup, Surprisingly Little Fight in the Fighters

If it is possible to see, or hear, through boxing's predictable bombast - the bluster of promoters and entourages, the cacophony of marching bands and D.J.s - there is an introspective, measured side of the buildup to Saturday's fight between Floyd Mayweather Jr. and Manny Pacquiao.

It rests with the boxers themselves.

The biggest fight in years has the quietest participants. It is so big, apparently, that showmanship is left to others.

"Me speaking out loud, me having personality, I did that in the past," Mayweather said Wednesday when asked about his demeanor. "I'm a lot older now. I'm a lot wiser. This fight sells itself. I don't have to do that."

There is no trash talk between the two men. There are no raised voices or barbed words. Given opportunity after opportunity to fuel acrimony, no matter how contrived, Mayweather (surprisingly) and Pacquiao (less surprisingly) have declined.

Wednesday's prefight news conference, during which the fighters were placed on a dais in front of dozens of news-hungry cameras, had the decorum of a political debate, not a boxing match. When someone said, "Time to pose the fighters," Mayweather and Pacquiao stood side by side, like two men in line for coffee.

Boxing has a high road, not always well-traveled, and Mayweather and Pacquiao have taken it. Politeness does not sell in boxing, but in this case, it does not matter.

Saturday's fight already is likely to become the biggest pay-per-view event in history. Tickets are selling for tens of thousands of dollars, hotel rooms in the city cost exponentially higher than usual, and Mayweather and Pacquiao will divide hundreds of millions of dollars, regardless of who wins.

Still, Mayweather has a reputation for talk as brash as his opulent lifestyle, needling opponents in the tradition of Muhammad Ali and other great boxers to whom Mayweather (47-0) likes to compare himself.

Not this time. Wearing a hoodie and a hat labeled by his brand, TMT - "The Money Team" - Mayweather called Pacquiao a "great fighter."

"This fight is not about good versus evil," Mayweather said when someone suggested that it might be. "It's about one fighter at the top against another fighter at the top."

His willingness to make room up there, at least for a few more days, has not gone unnoticed. Mayweather's training has been as focused as ever, but, more than any time in his career, there seems to be a detachment from the emotion of the bout.

He said that, at 38, he expects this to be the second-to-last fight of his career. He is under contract to fight once more, and plans to honor that commitment later this year. He shrugs off questions about the likelihood of a rematch with Pacquiao, and is startlingly blunt about boxing.

"I don't really enjoy it like I once did, nah," he said a couple of weeks ago at his Las Vegas gym. "It's at a point now, it's a business. It's my job. I go to the gym, I train, I go home. I know what I have to do. It was fun, but I'm to a point where I'm really over all of this."

Among those who recognize something different in Mayweather is Freddie Roach, Pacquiao's trainer, a former boxer with a salesman's streak. At a news conference in Los Angeles several weeks ago, Roach, a veteran of these things, told Mayweather directly that Pacquiao would win. It is how the game is usually played.

On the way home, Roach wondered to himself why Mayweather did not engage in the verbal sparring. Other lobs, like undetonated grenades, have provoked no reaction from Mayweather's side.

"I don't think it's a fight he wants to be in," Roach said Wednesday.

Roach is one of the few using words as a warm-up act. (Floyd Mayweather Sr., the father and trainer, is an old-school master of the genre, calling him "Freddie The Joke Coach Roach" after suggesting that there was "no need for fireworks right now.") But Pacquiao has never been a demonstrative sort.

"I don't have a prediction," Pacquiao said Wednesday when offered a chance to provide a sound-bite guarantee. "I'm excited."

Pacquiao cloaks himself in the persona of a good-natured man who has chased his demons through the grace of God. The promoter Bob Arum said that he is sure that Pacquiao will give half his proceeds to charity.

Pacquiao, wearing gray slacks and a light blue button-down shirt under a dark blue blazer, looking like a man who wandered over from a convention, said that he hoped to speak to Mayweather about faith, presumably after he tries to punch him in the face many times.

But when it came time to "pose the fighters," he and Mayweather did as they were directed. They stood together, they faced one another, they stared into each other's eyes.

Pacquiao soon smiled. Even Mayweather could not feign antipathy for long. Sometimes, the greatest shows have nothing to do with showmanship.