FLOYD Mayweather Jr and Conor McGregor are the men charged with selling the fight, making themselves nine figures in the process.

Which means that Floyd’s latest prediction reads: “It won’t go the distance. I look forward to ending the fight early. It’s not going the distance.”

Floyd Mayweather Sr, in comments few paid attention to last month, kept it real. ‘Money’ is probably not going to knock ‘The Notorious’ out, thanks to a long-standing problem.

“I ain’t gonna say a knockout, because my son got a hand problem,” Mayweather Sr told FOX Sports 11. “That’s a true story, he got a hand problem.”

Mayweather Sr added: “He gonna make Conor McGregor look like a fool. Believe me.” But expect that potential outcome by way of a lopsided decision.

Sportsbet.com.au currently has a Mayweather KO ($1.72) as the favourite method of victory, against ($3.50) for a Mayweather decision win, $5 for a McGregor KO and $21 for a McGregor points victory.

Yet the fact is, even taking into account that UFC megastar McGregor is a boxing novice, Mayweather is far from a KO machine.

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‘Money’s’ 49-0 record features just 26 KOs (53 per cent). His last KO win came six years and eight fights ago, a highly controversial stoppage against Victor Ortiz, the only KO in his last 10 fights. He has not scored consecutive KO wins since 2000-01, against Emanuel Augustus and Diego Corrales.

Why? He has been battling hand problems for his entire career, forcing him to become the genius defensive and counter-punching exponent who no one has been able to stop.

Mayweather’s former cutman Miguel Diaz revealed that brittle hands had been a problem for two generations of the family, having also wrapped the hands of father Mayweather Sr, plus uncles Roger and Jeff Mayweather.

“He has all the problems in the world with his hands,” Diaz told Daily Intelligencer of Mayweather Jr in 2015, before the Manny Pacquiao fight.

“They all have the same hands, and the same problems. They didn’t have enough calcium as babies. Their bones did not grow strong.”

Another long-time former cutman of Mayweather, Rafael Garcia, revealed that he used a special, unnamed Mexican medicine on the boxer’s hands. And of course, Mayweather did not even try to stop Pacquiao, adopting an ultra-conservative gameplan that exasperated the millions of fans who paid to watch the superfight.

Roger Mayweather, his trainer, put that down to one factor: “If Floyd fought Pacquiao with good motherf***ing hands, he would stop Pacquiao, period.”

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Mayweather hasn’t fought for two years, since his underwhelming unanimous decision win over Andre Berto. He hurt both hands in that fight, despite barely pursuing a knockout.

If McGregor is an unknown quantity because it’s his first pro boxing match, then Mayweather is something of a concern because he’s rusty, 40 years-old and brittle.

Mayweather Promotions chief executive Leonard Ellerbe told Fight Hub TV that ‘Money’s’ hands were one of their few legitimate worries about the bout.

“Any damn thing can happen. Obviously I’ve been with Floyd, so I can recall [the Carlos Hernandez fight, 2001, a unanimous decision win], Floyd hurt both of his hands in the fight where he fractured [his hands and had to take a knee],” Ellerbe said.

“What happens if Floyd comes out in the first and second round and he cracks him upside his head with a right hand and he fractures his right hand? And then in the next round he comes out and does the same thing with his left hand. What happens?

“Guess what, that’s the reality - anything can happen, so that’s why you just have to train, train as hard as you can, put in your best work and it’s gonna be what it’s gonna be.”

Floyd Mayweather Jr. holds a media workout last week. Source: AFP

Mayweather himself admitted, speaking to media late last year, that his body had been busted since a June 2005 stoppage win over Arturo Gatti - sixteen fights ago.

“Before my hands and my body broke down, I was a knockout artist,” Mayweather said. “But of course, boxing has wear and tear on the body. My last hurrah was Arturo Gatti, after that fight my body was no good. But I was still so smart and sharp, I was able to go out there and just mentally dominate, make smart moves.”

23 of Mayweather’s KOs came before and including Gatti, with just three afterwards.

With that in mind, McGregor himself has been bullish. “KO inside four rounds. He’s too small, too frail,” he told media during the MayMac promotional tour.

The Irishman has mocked Mayweather’s hands from the outset, laughing off ‘Money’s’ predictions of a rare KO finish.

“Yeah right, yeah right,” McGregor laughed at the LA stop of the tour. “You ain’t knocked nobody out in about 30 years motherf***er.

“Brittle fists, brittle fists. Those hands sore already? Do they hurt more in the cold? Make sure you get them massaged out.”

Mayweather responded: “You right, you right. You’ll see, you’ll see. You getting stopped. You getting stopped.”

In Mayweather’s favour may be conditioning. ‘Money’ is phenomenally fit, while McGregor’s last fight that went the distance - his majority decision win over Nate Diaz at UFC 202 - saw him regularly backing up from his opponent to catch his breath. That was a 25-minute fight, albeit in five-minute rounds where he was also defending takedowns, against 36 minutes (12 x 3-minute rounds) vs Mayweather, who may fancy his chances of stopping a gassed-out rival.

Conor McGregor KOs Jose Aldo at UFC 194. Source: AP

Even if Mayweather can’t stop McGregor, the UFC ace will still have his hands full. Berto, soundly beaten by ‘Money’ in the undefeated legend’s last fight, has explained that he still packs a punch, is a tactical master and all but impossible to hit.

“He puts you in a place where, he’s so defensive and elusive and you’re steadily punching, and you keep swinging and you see him looking at you,” Berto told Fight Hype in April.

“So he kind of puts you in a place where, ‘OK, if I keep swinging too much, I’m going to hang myself out there to get hit.’ Because he’s seeing. He’s seeing. He’s seeing. He’s seeing all this. He’s very smart at dictating the pace.

“When I was in there with him, he manages the time. He looks up at the clock like four times during a round. He’ll move around, move around, look at the clock, move around, move around, look at the clock, grab you tight, look at the clock and then, ‘Bop! Bop!’ He’ll hit you two or three times, just enough to win the round.

“He’s going to get your attention. If you’re walking in ... you’re going to feel it. He’s not a big puncher, he’s a sharp puncher - enough to let you know like, ‘OK, I can’t just get hit with nothing just being stupid, it might really, really hurt next time’.”