TAKE FIVE: OSCAR DE LA HOYA VS. RICARDO MAYORGA

Saturday, May 6, 2006 | 7:45 a.m.

Oscar De La Hoya (37-4, 29 KOs) vs. Ricardo Mayorga (28-5-1, 23 KOs)

World super welterweight title

6 p.m. today at the MGM Grand Garden Arena

$350 to $1,250 ($150 seats sold out) at the MGM Grand Garden Arena box office, mgmgrand.com or ticketmaster.com

HBO Pay-Per-View ($49.95)

Kassim Ouma (23-2-1, 15 KOs) vs. Marco Antonio Rubio (32-2-1, 29 KOs), 12 rounds, junior middleweights

De La Hoya minus-300; Mayorga plus-250; Round proposition, will go/won't go 12 full rounds

Muy loco

De La Hoya and Richard Schaefer, who runs the fighter's Golden Boy Promotions company, have routinely - almost offhandedly - referred to Mayorga as "crazy," or a "crazy man" throughout the promotion, a reference to the Nicaraguan's erratic behavior inside and outside of the ring. After a news conference Wednesday at the MGM Grand, Mayorga more than lived up to the billing when he threatened to pull out of the fight unless his paycheck was substantially sweetened - to $8 million from the $2 million deal he originally signed.

Idols

De La Hoya dismissed the situation as a stunt by Mayorga designed to psyche him out. "I don't even think about it," De La Hoya said. "I don't even care." At Mayorga's insistence, De La Hoya met with him Wednesday to hear him out. "I said that's your problem and (Mayorga's promoter) Don King's problem," De La Hoya said. Schaefer predicted Mayorga wouldn't pull out, as doing so would amount to career suicide. "You don't walk away from $2 million and the opportunity to fight Oscar De La Hoya," he said, "no matter how crazy you are."

Any doubt that Mayorga marches to a different beat was erased by the way his camp boasted about how seriously he trained for De La Hoya. "Right now he's smoking about three to four cigarettes per day as opposed to two or three packs a day when he's not training," Mayorga adviser Tony Gonzalez said. "And no beer in this camp." Publicist Alan Hopper had the perfect response to that revelation: "Wow. OK. Next question."

He Hate Me - and vice versa

Even before Mayorga threatened to sabotage the event this week, the prefight promotional tour was marked by rancorous exchanges and insult-trading between the fighters. "It's nice to hear that he has so much hate for me," Mayorga, 32, said. "We'll see if he demonstrates how much hate he has toward me by standing in the middle of the ring fighting with me." Mayorga acknowledged the feelings were mutual. "I just don't like him on a personal level," Mayorga said. "I want to stop his heart or detach his retina, one of the two." Classy.

End is near

At 33, De La Hoya, the sport's biggest nonheavyweight box office draw, has entered the twilight of his magnificent fighting career - but he wants to go out on top. He hasn't fought in nearly 20 months, since losing by a ninth-round knockout to Bernard Hopkins in September 2004. He trained for Mayorga for four months and said he now weighs 151 pounds. (Mayorga plans to put on 18 pounds after the weigh-in.) "I want to become a world champion again and I want to retire as a world champion," De La Hoya said.