BOXING 5





Not true, claimed Leonard Ellerbe, the chief executive of Mayweather's promotions company, who claimed this month that his man was ready to fight at the MGM in May next year. "When the boss man decides to lace them up, it's time to go," he said.

"He wants the biggest fight out there. We want to give the fans exactly what they want. If we came out and said some stupid stuff, that he was going to fight Matthew Hatton or Paulie Malignaggi, no disrespect to those guys, but that's dumb.

''It's disrespectful to the public. That's not what the fans want to see. If we can't make [Pacquiao] happen, we're going to find the biggest fight."

Ellerbe's comment seemed to signal a break in the long impasse between the two camps, but neither his words nor even the man himself impressed Freddie Roach. "Who is Ellerbe? He's Mayweather's bag carrier and that's about it. I don't put any store in what he says,'' Pacquiao's trainer said this week.

But beneath the surface of the verbal jousting, even Roach cannot hide his instincts. He may be a world-class trainer but he is a boxing fan, too. Like all fans, he is desperate to see his man face Mayweather, describing such a contest as "the icing on the cake" of both his career and Pacquiao's.