







LAS VEGAS – Floyd Mayweather Jr. riveted a small group of reporters Tuesday, talking for more than an hour about his humble roots, Manny Pacquiao's alleged steroids use and Bob Arum's supposed untruths.

He told a poignant story of how one of his childhood homes had no hot water and so, in order to take a bath, he had to heat water on the stove and mix it with tap water in order to be comfortable.

His voice quivered with emotion at times as he recalled receiving $500 in a Western Union telegram from a boxing manager he didn't know at a time his mother was on the verge of financial ruin.

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"Five hundred dollars! I couldn't imagine that kind of money," he said, staring into space.

Mayweather, like any great entertainer, saved the best material for last. Whether you want to call it a tirade, a rant or a soliloquy, he turned up the heat as he addressed arch-rival Pacquiao, promoter Arum and performance-enhancing drugs.

Mayweather, who will fight Miguel Cotto on Saturday at the MGM Grand Garden in an HBO Pay-Per-View event expected to sell more than 1.5 million units, paced around the tiny room, pounding his chest and pouring his heart out for the better part of 15 minutes as he discussed Pacquiao.

Pacquiao has filed a defamation suit against Mayweather for alleging Pacquiao has taken performance-enhancing drugs. On Tuesday, Mayweather could barely contain his fury, even though no one had asked him about Pacquiao when he began his jaw-dropping tirade.

Mayweather approached a veteran reporter who has covered his career starting in his amateur days. The unbeaten boxer knelt down in front of the reporter, placed his hand on the reporter's hand and essentially said he wouldn't fight Pacquiao unless he was convinced Pacquiao isn't using any PEDs.

"Can I ask you a question?" Mayweather said to the reporter. "Do you do the things that you do to make you happy, or do what you do to make everybody else happy, people you don't know?"

The reporter said he did things to make himself happy, at which point, Mayweather jumped to his feet and began pacing animatedly around the room, where more than a dozen members of what he calls "The Money Team," were listening to their boss with rapt attention.

"When my career is over, anything can happen and my health is more important than anything," Mayweather said, pounding his heart with his fist several times as he spoke. "I'm not saying nobody is, or nobody is not doing it. But my health is more important than anything. Guess what? When my career is over, if I'm hurt, or something is going on, because something has happened in a fight, I can't come to you and say, 'Yo, I need you to pay my rent for this month. I need you to pay my bills for this month. I need you to pay my car note. I need you to put my kids through school.'

"So, my health is more important. So, you're an American, right? I'm an American. I was in the Olympics. I represented the red, white and blue. You know what the American writers should say? 'Well, why is this guy from another country coming over here and making money [and] taking it back to his country?' Once again, I'm feeding American citizens every day. All I ask is, give a little blood, give a little urine. That's a crime?"





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