Is Floyd Mayweather's 'Money' Persona Gone for Good?

When it comes to Floyd Mayweather Jr., image is everything.

Or maybe it only used to be.

Long before a match between “Money” and Manny Pacquiao became the apple of every secondary-market ticket salesman’s eye, the fighter then known as “Pretty Boy” was never more than a sound bite away from turning an imminent opponent into a defenseless verbal punching bag.

He reportedly referred to Genaro Hernandez as a “piece of garbage”—a charge his representatives refute—before taking the veteran’s 130-pound title in 1998; insisted he’d pummel Diego Corrales “like a dog, for every battered woman out there” in 2001; and warranted separate press conferences and a separate weigh-in due to the severity of his pre-fight rancor toward Arturo Gatti in 2005.

Jae C. Hong/Associated Press

By contrast, his manners prior to the most lucrative fight in history have been positively polite.

A pay-per-view tagged at nearly $100, per MailOnline's Jeff Powell, and a payday forecast north of $150 million seemingly do away with a lot of the need for attention-grabbing, petulant behavior.

Where past fights needed headlines, Mayweather told reporters, this one does not.

“At first, it was like, one way or another, by communication or by my boxing skills, you will watch me, you will see me, I will be seen,” he said. “But I'm in a position now I don't have to do that.”

Maybe not. But it’s not as if the chatterbox persona has been absent for a decade.

He rattled the cage of former opponent and current sparring partner Zab Judah by suggesting to reporters that the Brooklyn-born two-division champion was envious of his position when they met in 2006.

“The problem is this,” Mayweather said. “Zab is really upset because he's not in my shoes. He's upset because of his position. He's been wanting to fight on HBO and be in my shoes, but I can't help that he's in the predicament he's in.”

Then, leading into a meeting with Oscar De La Hoya that’s still the highest-selling pay-per-view of all time, he drove the Golden Boy batty with comments and antics that nearly prompted Richard Schaefer—then-CEO of De La Hoya’s promotional company—to send him home from the press tour.

Fast-forward to today, and even Mayweather’s promotional CEO Leonard Ellerbe and outspoken father are toeing the businesslike line while leaving Pacquiao’s trainer to do the heaviest incendiary lifting.

“Freddie Roach is just trying to promote his fighter,” Ellerbe said of Pacquiao's trainer, according to Steve Carp of the Las Vegas Review-Journal. “He’s just doing his job. Our job is to not pay any attention to what they say and just focus on getting ready to fight come May 2.”

In reality, though, it’s not just Pacquiao who's brought out the businessman in his opponent.

Mayweather's mostly been a model citizen prior to each of the four fights on his Showtime contract thus far, staying muted for press tours and other engagements while saving what theater there has been for the strolls from locker room to ring—and giving Lil Wayne and Justin Bieber a fleeting chance at relevance in the boxing world.

John Salangsang/Invision/AP/Associated Press

Bieber crashed the March 11 press conference and claims he’ll return for the May 2 ring walk, but it’s unlikely—even to perceived top Mayweather enemy Bob Arum—that Floyd will revert to past form unless the ticket counters mandate it.

In the promoter’s opinion, it’s simply not needed.

He uses his relationship with his former client as evidence, suggesting to reporters that the “Money” persona—like the issues between he and Mayweather—is as much a product of perception as reality.

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We spent over 10 years together. Whenever we meet, he greets me cordially. We come from different worlds and different generations, but we still are very, very cordial to each other. I think that with a lot of this, the press prodded Floyd into castigating me personally when I don't think he really believed it, or that he would have said it if the question had been asked differently.

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With even Arum seeming to be on good terms with Floyd, there's little chance we see the more controversial side of 'Money Mayweather' at any point before the bell rings on May 2. He appears perfectly content with letting others do the heavy lifting when it comes to trash talk and showmanship at this point in his career.