In a sport where no one can agree on anything, Floyd Mayweather has emerged as a consensus choice for a title that is no less prestigious for being nonexistent: he is the undisputed pound-for-pound champion, which is to say, the best boxer in the world in any weight class. He might also be the highest paid athlete in the world, in any sport, especially if we set aside endorsement deals. Kobe Bryant earns about thirty million dollars a year to play basketball; Alex Rodriguez, baseball’s highest-paid player, is earning roughly that this year, although no one but him seems happy about it. But Mayweather earned even more—thirty-two million dollars—on a single night in May, when he outboxed Roberto Guerrero. And he is scheduled to earn another forty-one and a half million dollars, at a minimum, on Saturday night, when he faces Saúl “Canelo” Álvarez, a young Mexican star, in what is, so far, the biggest boxing match of the decade. That’s over seventy-three million dollars in athletic income this year—likely more, if he gets additional payments from pay-per-view revenue.

Despite all of these superlatives, the runup to Saturday’s fight has been strikingly calm, sometimes even dull. Fighters sometimes try to seduce fans, and intimidate each other, by issuing grisly and baroque pronouncements, so that the fight itself comes to seem like the logical conclusion of a protracted drama. But Mayweather isn’t much given to violent threats, perhaps because his boxing style isn’t particularly violent—it has been more than six years since he truly knocked out an opponent. (In 2011, he flattened Victor Ortiz, but that knockout deserves an asterisk: Mayweather surprised Ortiz with a one-two combination while Ortiz was apologizing for an egregious foul.) Mayweather’s greatness lies in his speed and technique. He is absurdly hard to hit, and infuriatingly good at exploiting his opponents’ lapses with sneaky counterpunches; he record is 44-0, and very few of those wins have been close, or arduous. This makes his popularity—and his income—that much more impressive: the best-paid athlete on the planet is a boxer who isn’t much of a puncher, and who can’t usually be punched.

In past years, Mayweather has balanced his prudent fighting style with a reckless public persona: on social media and in the television documentaries that precede his fights, he has portrayed himself as a voracious shopper and prodigious gambler, surrounded by an enormous entourage and a complicated family. (In one memorable scene from a few years ago, he nearly came to blows with his father, a former fighter who was previously—and is currently—his trainer.) This time around, the Mayweather universe seems calmer, or maybe just more familiar. In one episode of “All Access,” the rather perfunctory Showtime series advertising the fight, we saw a member of Mayweather’s entourage transporting a few hundred thousand dollars in cash in her handbag. We also heard some talk about the upcoming fight, but not much. Shane Mosley, who has fought (and been beaten by) both Mayweather and Álvarez, musters up some noncommittal analysis for the camera. “Mayweather has the master mind,” he says, “but Canelo is better than what he thinks.”

Maybe so. Certainly Álvarez is the most popular fighter that Mayweather has faced since he beat Oscar De La Hoya, in 2007. And that popularity, rather than Álvarez’s considerable skill, has been the main focus of this promotion. In Mexico, Álvarez is a mainstream celebrity, a twenty-three-year-old heartthrob from Jalisco known as “Canelo”—Cinnamon—for his red hair. (Richard Schaefer, one of the promoters behind the fight, has called Álvarez “the Mexican James Dean.”) Mayweather is more famous than beloved, but Álvarez is genuinely popular, and when the two boxers appear in public together, even in this country, Mayweather is often booed. In June, when the two fighters came to Times Square for a press conference, Stephen Espinoza, a Showtime executive, called the fight a case of “the best fighting the best,” but he seemed more interested in the bigness than the bestness. “The two biggest stars in the sport,” he said. “The two biggest fan bases.” There is something self-referential about the marketing of Mayweather vs. Álvarez: it’s a fight you must watch, simply because so many people will be watching it.

About that bestness: Álvarez is rightly considered the most accomplished fighter at junior middleweight, which is a hundred and fifty-four pounds; Mayweather is more comfortable at welterweight, at a hundred and forty-seven, so Álvarez agreed to fight him at a compromise weight, known as a catchweight, of a hundred and fifty-two pounds. (For some reason, the two men disagree vehemently about whose idea this was.) Even so, Álvarez will likely be the biggest man Mayweather has ever faced, and he is a formidable fighter: not quick but slick enough, with a sturdy frame and a knack for delivering precise, thudding punches that can suddenly become dispositive. Like Mayweather, Álvarez is undefeated, with forty-two wins and one draw. But although Alvarez is a much more destructive fighter than Mayweather, he is also a much less voluble character. It would seem that his best chance to beat Mayweather is with a shocking knockout, but Álvarez, though confident, hasn’t made wild claims about what he plans to do to Mayweather. You don’t get the sense that he would be surprised if he won, but you also don’t get the sense that he would be astounded if he lost.

According to the oddsmakers, Álvarez is about a two-and-a-half to one underdog, though his actual chances are probably slimmer. (The odds against him would be longer if he didn’t have so many fans eager to bet on him.) In an episode of “All Access,” cameras caught Álvarez and his crew watching a recent fight starring Abner Mares, an emerging Mexican-American star, who was upset by an underdog named Jhonny González, who knocked Mares out in the first round. Álvarez seemed disappointed, but his response was philosophical—he didn’t draw any direct connection to his own upcoming fight against a heavy favorite. “The favorite doesn’t always win. The guy that you think will win doesn’t always win,” he said, in Spanish. “Pues así es el boxeo.” But that’s boxing.

Mayweather, for his part, is scornful and dismissive of Álvarez—he calls him “just another opponent.” And considering Mayweather’s track record, it’s hard to disagree with his assessment: Why should this fight be any different from the forty-four that came before? At thirty-six, Mayweather should be past his prime; if he keeps fighting, he will eventually become hittable, at which point he may become a different sort of fighter, possibly a more violent one. For now, some aficionados are less excited about Mayweather-Álvarez than they are about the main undercard match, between a tough young Philadelphia champion named Danny García and a savage puncher from Argentina named Lucas Matthysse; they are not celebrities, but the match should produce the kind of sustained ferocity that fans love. It’s possible that the main event will be ferocious, too, if Álvarez catches Mayweather cleanly, providing a shocking and definitive end to Mayweather’s extraordinary run. But the Mayweather era has also proven that lots of fight fans, avid and casual, don’t necessarily need to see knockouts or upsets or blood-and-bruises ordeals. Sometimes, Mayweather has taught us, it’s enough merely to watch the best boxer in the world, showing everyone just how good he still is.

Above: Floyd Mayweather in May. Photograph by Ethan Miller/Getty.