If you think you've seen this before, you probably have. Remember 1982's "Rocky III," in which Rocky Balboa squares off with a gigantic wrestler named Thunderlips (played by Hulk Hogan) in a charity exhibition?

The wages of sin, it appears, are becoming ever more profitable. A catchweight bout? Ha! What fighter, even the best in the world, gives away 16 inches in height and 250 pounds of heft unless (a) he's being paid piles of money and (b) has read the script and knows for sure that the outcome won't result in a couple of months in traction?

As for proposition (a), the answer is a staggering $20 million, which is what Mayweather will receive for pretending to actually get it on with this Big Show character.

For that kind of scratch, I'd wrestle the guy myself. For real. You can pay a lot of medical bills with $20 million and have plenty left over once you've healed, or at least leave enough to your widow to ensure your family will be well taken care of after the funeral.

"Money" Mayweather is wealthy already, so it's not as if he's doing this to escape poverty. He's merely going from really rich to even richer. It's like Donald Trump deciding he needs to acquire more real estate or do more reality TV.

What puzzles me is how professional wrestling - or rasslin', as I prefer to call it - has become so quasi-respectable that it can hurl the contents of a bank vault at legitimate athletes still at the top of their games.

Perhaps you've seen "Requiem for a Heavyweight," the classic 1962 film in which Anthony Quinn portrays a broken-down pug named Mountain Rivera. With no prospect of more decent paydays in boxing and out of loyalty to his weasel of a manager, played by Jackie Gleason, the humiliated Rivera turns to rasslin'.

Just a guess, but I'd venture that Rod Serling authored his 1956 teleplay (which starred Jack Palance as Mountain McClintock that autumn on "Playhouse 90") with Joe Louis in mind. Louis, one of the greatest heavyweight champions ever, was so desperate to reduce his burgeoning IRS debt that he turned to rasslin' after his boxing career ended with a 1951 knockout loss to a young Rocky Marciano.

The tragic descent of the "Brown Bomber" was detailed in the recent HBO documentary, "Joe Louis: America's Hero . . . Betrayed," which also suggested rasslin' was an activity of ill repute to which boxing's fallen angels were consigned.

Entrepreneurial genius Vince McMahon oversees a multimillion-dollar World Wrestling Entertainment empire that even Serling couldn't have imagined as a "Twilight Zone" episode.

George Mitchell could be kept busy for decades investigating an enterprise in which failed football players with gimmick names seemingly are more juiced than a Florida orange grove, but Americans turn a blind eye because, hey, it really isn't a sport, is it? Pro wrestlers are as much actors as athletes, if not more so.

What scares me is that a British bookmaker actually established odds on which legendary sports figure next allows himself to be lured in by WWE's cash grab.

Golfing great Tiger Woods, by the way, is listed at 25-1.

Say it ain't so, Tiger. But if you do decide to explore that option, my guess is that the script they send you will call for using a 7-iron to dispatch a very large opponent.

Other than the prospect of picking up a fast $20 million with minimal effort, which is all the incentive most human beings would ever need, I'd venture that Mayweather is doing this out of boredom. He's too dominant in boxing to remain as interested as he once was, so he sashays on "Dancing with the Stars," dabbles in rap, and publicly daydreams about trying his hand at mixed martial arts. It's more or less what happened to Roy Jones Jr. in 1996, when he played a USBL basketball game in the afternoon before fighting later that same evening. Even in the 1950s, Sugar Ray Robinson took a break from the ring to tap-dance across Europe.

But you know what, Floyd? The many fight fans who have followed your rise to the pinnacle of boxing would much rather you get back to business and sign for a unification bout with WBA welterweight titlist Miguel Cotto than to waltz across a ballroom floor or fake it against some growling WWE villain with an overactive pituitary gland.

That's not merely the best way to keep it real, it's the only way. *

Send e-mail to fernanb@phillynews.com.