Circus tour for De La Hoya and Mayweather fight

WASHINGTON, Feb 27 (Reuters) Oscar De La Hoya was clearly distracted, silently scanning the crowd while Floyd Mayweather hurled a flurry of insults his way.

''I'm the top dog in boxing!'' Mayweather shouted, pointing at De La Hoya. ''It'll be a toe-to-toe battle. You can fall on your face.

You can fall on your ass. You can fall on your back.

''I'm going to take my time and give you a brutal beating. A brutal beating!'' The raucous crowd at Union Station roared its approval, looking for a response from De La Hoya, hoping he would leap from his seat and charge the fighter known as ''Pretty Boy''.

De La Hoya refused to take the bait, sitting impassively. With 42 professional fights under his belt, the constant hype for their lucrative May 5 bout in Las Vegas is familiar territory.

''I hate the fact that he's a like an out-of-control brat,'' the 34-year-old De La Hoya told Reuters after the event. ''I don't like creating circus acts. This is not good for me, it's not good for boxing.

''Let's talk and say what we're going to do, thank the people and hype the fight. But you don't have to act like a brat. I'm hating it inside.'' Boxing fans know the hype is as much a part of the game as a left jab. Often the pre-fight hoopla ends up with the two boxers trading punches on the podium.

Even the sport's core of dedicated fans admit that when two boxers tussle during a news conference it is usually as scripted as a Broadway show.

Renowned boxing writer Bert Sugar says the once-dominant sport needs all the attention it can get.

''The face of boxing's coverage has changed,'' said Sugar, a cigar-chomping member of the International Boxing Hall of Fame.

''There used to be boxing writers. Reporters would go to the Catskills (in upstate New York) and watch fighters train for weeks.

''There used to be three sports: baseball, horse racing and boxing. It's no longer like that. Everything is a sport now -- darts, bullriding.

''There's Texas hold'em on TV. We're watching some 50-year-old fart with his hat on backwards wearing sunglasses playing poker.

That's why boxing has to now go to the people.'' The De La Hoya-Mayweather showdown for the junior middleweight championship will be one of the biggest money-making fights in history. Tickets at the 17,000-seat MGM Grand arena sold out in three hours for a Nevada-record gate of 19 million dollar.

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