Not everyone agrees, however, that boxing's newest crossover star - perhaps you've seen Mayweather gliding across the ballroom floor on "Dancing with the Stars," or tangling with a 7-foot, 440-pound rassler named Big Show on WrestleMania XXIV - is the best fighter in his weight class.

WBA 147-pound titlist Miguel Cotto Jr., of Puerto Rico, isn't nearly as flashy as Mayweather, but he is winning over fans with his meat-and-potatoes style that is as effective at wearing down opponents as were more celebrated fighters in earlier times.

"The guy endures. He beats you down. He is relentless in the way [Marvin] Hagler was relentless. And he damages you the way Hagler damaged people," Hall of Fame trainer Emanuel Steward says of Cotto (31-0, 25 KOs), who defends his title against Alfonso Gomez (18-3-2, 8 KOs) tomorrow night in the nightcap of an HBO-televised welterweight championship doubleheader in Atlantic City Boardwalk Hall. The other title scrap pits IBF champ Kermit Cintron (29-1, 27 KOs) against former WBO welterweight ruler Antonio Margarito (35-5, 25 KOs) in a redux of their 2005 bout that Margarito won by fifth-round technical knockout.

If a poll were taken of knowledgeable boxing fans, Mayweather-Cotto almost certainly would finish first on any list of most-anticipated matchups.

Mayweather isn't likely to be in Boardwalk Hall tomorrow night to scout possible opponents, but he'll be as conspicuous by his absence as he would have been were he sitting at ringside.

The skeptics, and they are growing in number, suggest that Mayweather has grown too rich and too content with his accomplishments to risk his undefeated record - and license to print money - against an opponent as dangerous as Cotto.

Mayweather - who recently predicted that he would make $170 million this year - apparently will fill out his 2008 dance card with high-paying, been-there, done-that rematches with his two most recent foes, Oscar De La Hoya and Ricky Hatton.

And while De La Hoya and Hatton are no pushovers, some construe Mayweather's less-risky proposed schedule as nothing less than an attempt to elude Cotto and some other legitimate threats in a very deep welterweight talent pool.

"Floyd will never fight Cotto. Never," stressed Top Rank founder Bob Arum, who promotes Cotto and once promoted Mayweather.

Steward, who manages and trains Cintron, more or less concurs.

"I don't think you'll see Floyd involved in many, but there are a lot of attractive matchups in the division," Steward said.

"Cotto, to me, is the guy who's done so much. I have as much respect for him as I have for anybody. He fought the best at 140 and 147, never ducked nobody. He's been cut, on the floor, staggered, but he's always found a way to win. He's been able to change and adjust his style on the fly in certain fights."

But Cotto appears to be uncomfortable with his reputation as a come-forward brawler who is willing to take one, and even two or three, to land one of his own.

In my most recent outing, on Nov. 10, Cotto won a unanimous decision over dangerous veteran Shane Mosley by outboxing him at times as well as outmuscling him on the inside.

"He's more deceptive than I thought, as far as boxing skills are concerned," Mosley said. "I didn't think it would so hard to hit him. He's pretty smooth with his boxing ability."

Cotto, who is trained by his uncle, Evangelista Cotto, has advanced so much on a technical level that he thinks he even could match up with Mayweather in a tactical fight, if it ever came to that.

"I'm pretty sure of it," he said when asked if he thought he would defeat Mayweather. "He's quick. He's fast. But when you pressure him, he closes his mind, you know?

"And he runs from the really good boxers. I don't know how the people that know boxing can put him in first place, pound-for-pound. To be the best, you have to fight the best." *