Mayweather:"I'm a fighter with special effects"

Floyd Mayweather Jr. is unbeaten, perhaps because he is so unpredictable. "I'm a fighter with special effects," Mayweather said Wednesday. Lots of talk, too. In the first of weekly conference calls before his junior-middleweight showdown with Oscar De La Hoya on May 5 at Las Vegas' MGM Grand, Mayweather first said he didn't want to talk about De La Hoya. Then, he proceeded to trash De La Hoya with a rapid-fire collection of insults and rhetorical combinations before he delivers the real ones he has repeatedly promised. "There are two things we know about Oscar," Mayweather (37-0, 24 knockouts) said from his training camp in Las Vegas before De La Hoya (38-4, 42 KOs) had his say from a camp in Puerto Rico. First, Mayweather said, De La Hoya tires easily late in fights. Second, he said, De La Hoya will quit. There was more, of course. There is always more from Mayweather. He said De La Hoya was greedy. He called him a brat. No telling what Mayweather would have said if he really had wanted to talk about him. Mayweather has been reunited with his uncle and trainer, Roger Mayweather. In his early training, Floyd Mayweather Sr., his dad and De La Hoya's ex-trainer, worked with him. "The Mayweather family is in the gym, together," he said. There's plenty of intrigue about how much the senior Mayweather, whom De La Hoya dumped in favor of Freddie Roach over money, will be involved in his son's camp throughout the weeks before opening bell. It's also not clear whether dad will be in his son's corner at opening bell. "Dad's going to be at the fight, front row," Mayweather said of a fight that sold out within three hours after tickets, priced as high as $2,000, went up for sale. "He might be in the corner, I don't know." De La Hoya sounded as if he is weary of all the talk. He said he anticipates that Mayweather's dad has given his son a scouting report. "But I don't think it's going to make a difference," said De La Hoya, who grew up in East Los Angeles and has moved to Puerto Rico with his wife, a Puerto Rican singer. "I know he's telling his son to look out for this, look out for that, that Oscar is vulnerable here and vulnerable there. "But after studying the video, we have him down. We have him down." Mayweather's woofing led to some speculation that he is hiding some anxiety. Mayweather was asked if he sounded nervous. "Nervous?" he said. "I ain't nervous. In 18 championship fights, I've never been nervous. This guy is no threat to me. "This is funny. Floyd Mayweather has never been nervous." Or quiet for long.