LAS VEGAS — Yes, Manny Pacquiao appeared at the Mandalay Bay late Saturday night, microphone in hand.

“Eight songs,” he said, before he left the MGM Grand. “But you can get in for $40.”
That’s $5 a song, but then the performer was playing hurt. Pacquiao had his right ear bandaged after a locker-room procedure, and he had the usual welts and bumps on his face that indicated he had a fight with someone.
The other guy? Miguel Cotto was at a hospital getting a full round of body scans, at the request of the state athletic commission.
He already had suffered a comprehensive X-ray by Pacquiao, who knocked down Cotto in rounds 3 and 4 and was so superior that Cotto basically backpedaled his way through the final three rounds before referee Kenny Bayless stopped the fight with 55 seconds remaining in the 12th round.
Pacquiao twice stood there and beckoned Cotto to come forward, and some fans looked incredulously at
Cotto’s corner, which couldn’t find a white towel.
“If the guy’s going to quit fighting and he’s out there beaten up and spitting blood, c’mon, why not stop it?” said Freddie Roach, Pacquiao’s trainer. “You gotta be more compassionate than that.”
Forgotten was Cotto’s 34-1 record and his reputation as the best technical welterweight. Or that Pacquiao’s training camp was re-located by Philippines’ typhoons and disrupted by Pacquiao’s endless entourage and the fighter’s own preoccupation with karaoke.
None of it mattered.
Such is Pacquiao’s current level.
Only one other boxer stands with him.
Which is why Ross Greenburg, the chairman of HBO sports, sat at a podium and periodically answered his phone and practically held a conversation with himself.
“This fight has to happen,” Greenburg said. “It happened about five times in the 80’s. You think of
Ray Leonard and Thomas Hearns. That’s the type of fight this is.”
He was speaking of Floyd Mayweather Jr., of course, who is unbeaten and, in affairs like this, somewhat inscrutable. The unbeaten Mayweather already has retired once and will not be a passive negotiator.
“I’ve already gotten three nasty messages,” Greenburg said. “Let’s face it, the decision will not be made by anybody but the fighters.”
There are also complications with Pacquiao, who wants to run for Congress in the Philippines. Arum has said that might necessitate a fight in March, which would mean the package must be signed by the end of this month.
“March is not ideal,” Greenburg said. “All our promotion would have to be during the Winter Olympics.
The time to have this fight is April, May or June.
“And it’s crucial for our sport. Not that boxing is in such desperate straits by any means. But this should be our Super Bowl. It will break records. I know it will be difficult. I think, why do I get into this?”
Someone suggested that super-fights usually don’t die on paper.
“From your mouth to God’s ears,” Greenburg said.
Mayweather will be promoted by Golden Boy, and its chairman, Richard Schaefer, said the talks will begin this week.
“Tell Richard to call me after Wednesday,” said Bob Arum, Pacquiao’s promoter.
That means Arum wants to see the pay-per-view numbers. Greenburg downplayed that factor, even saying these buys might not exceed the one million that Mayweather and Juan Manuel Marquez generated. Most feel Pacquiao-Cotto will do at least 1.5 million.
But think about that: a million and a half buys, at $54.95, is $82.4 million. In a recession. And Pacquiao-Mayweather will do much better.
“I’m just hoping that a percentage point here or there won’t kill this fight and I don’t think it will,” Greenburg said. “I think of (Muhammad) Ali and (Joe) Frazier, in 1971. That was $2.5 million for each. They realized what it meant. This will define both guys.”
Roach already has defined Mayweather.
“Sure, he’s quick,” Roach said. “But Manny has more hand speed. He’ll attack Floyd and try to make him fight every minute of every round. And Floyd can’t break an egg. There’s no way he’ll knock out Manny Pacquiao.”
Well, Cotto couldn’t.
“This guy is special,” Roach said. “He hung out on the ropes early tonight and I yelled at him and he said he was all right, and he was. He works so hard. I told him he couldn’t run on Sundays. He said, well, somewhere I have an opponent who runs on Sundays. He’s a once-in-a-lifetime fighter.”
“Freddie’s not my trainer anymore,” Pacquiao said. “I call him the master.”
And, with that, Pacquiao cleared his throat.
“You ask me if I love you, and I choke on my reply,” he sang. Then he cut off “Sometimes When We Touch,” hugged Arum, and walked away.
And maybe that will be the theme for the first Fight Of Next Decade.
Shlock and awe.