LAS VEGAS, May 5 — Floyd Mayweather Jr. had just defeated Oscar De La Hoya in their superwelterweight title bout in a split decision Saturday night when a controversy threatened to delay, if not upend, his victory.
Richard Schaefer, the chief executive of De La Hoya’s Golden Boy Promotions, looked at the scorecard and erupted. The scores by the three judges looked transposed, which would have given De La Hoya the victory, because his scores were listed as coming from the blue corner, when he was actually in the red one. Schaefer stormed out of the MGM Grand Garden Arena, a copy of the scorecard in hand, looking in the bowels of the building for one of the Nevada State Athletic commissioners or someone from the World Boxing Council, which sanctioned the fight.
He found none of them, but upon his return to the arena, he stepped onto the edge of the ring, where he got enough information from an assistant at the commission to satisfy him that the scores were rendered correctly on the scorecard even if the colors that marked the corners were not.
For a few minutes, the scene in the ring resembled something out of the examination of hanging chads on presidential ballots of Palm Beach County in Florida counties during the 2000 election. TV and still cameras surrounded them as Schaefer stoically tried to learn what had occurred.
“Every other promoter would probably protest and it would drag on and there’d be hearings,” Schaefer said at a news conference. “But this sport doesn’t deserve that. I believe it was an honest mistake.”
He wasn’t entirely satisfied with the paper trail he had seen and said with sarcasm that W.B.C. officials could not be found because “they went on to cash their check.”
De La Hoya and Mayweather will be able to cash very substantial checks very soon. De La Hoya (38-5), the former champion, was guaranteed $23.3 million and Mayweather (38-0) $10 million, but their share of pay-per-view revenue will vault their earnings into an even higher stratosphere.
Theirs was a fight in which De La Hoya was the clear aggressor, throwing more punches, and frequently pummeling Mayweather on the ropes. Mayweather had greater success in the middle of the ring, taking advantage of De La Hoya’s less-than adequate left jab. Although Mayweather lives here, this city is De La Hoya Country, and the fans roared for every flurry, and every punch landed, whether they were effective or not.
“All those shots he was throwing, he was missing,” Mayweather said afterward at a news conference, which he entered with his friend, the rapper 50 Cent. “I was catching them on my shoulders.”
According to PunchStat figures compiled by CompuBox, De La Hoya threw more punches, 587 to Mayweather’s 481, but was less efficient, connecting on 122 to Mayweather’s 207. They threw nearly the same number of jabs, but Mayweather landed 69 to De La Hoya’s 40. And while De La Hoya threw 100 more power punches, Mayweather landed 56 more.
“When I was boxing him, I said, ‘Damn, it’s easy hitting him in the face,’ ” said Mayweather, clad in a naval jacket. “How’d he beat all those guys when it’s so easy to him in the face? I was waiting for his left hook, but he wasn’t going to hit me with it because I could see it coming.”
Mayweather won the fight, 116-112 and 115-113, on the scorecards of the judges Chuck Giampa and Jerry Roth. Tom Kaczmarek, the third judge, scored it 115-113 for De La Hoya.
Mayweather said he believed he won eight rounds. “I beat the best at 130, 135, 140, 147, and I now I beat the best at 154,” he said, although he said he actually weighed 148. “And I’ve made a ton of money.”
Floyd Mayweather Sr., who is estranged from his son, whom he developed as an amateur and young professional, and who later trained De La Hoya for six years, said he thought De La Hoya had won.
De La Hoya said he did not believe he had lost, but his voice showed little conviction when he said he felt that he had won.
“You have to respect the judges,” he said, adding that he did what he had to do, followed his trainer Freddie Roach’s game plan to be aggressive and cut off the ring as much as possible. But he said his jab failed him on a night when he desperately needed one. “He’s a great fighter,” he said. “What can I say? You can’t say anything bad about him.”
Mayweather said he was retiring but he hedged a little on giving up a potentially larger payday for a rematch. “I don’t know what the future holds for Floyd Mayweather,” he said, adding that he would speak to his advisers.
De La Hoya said only that he was returning to the drawing board to assess what happened. He is 34, and has now lost 5 of his last 12 fights.
It is unlikely that Mayweather, if he remains retired, will become a partner and executive in Golden Boy Promotions, as two other fighters who have beaten De La Hoya, Bernard Hopkins and Sugar Shane Mosley, have. Hopkins and Mosley stood behind De La Hoya on a stage as he spoke.
De La Hoya and Mayweather might eventually be able to put aside the acrimony that characterized the promotion of the bout, which HBO and Golden Boy hope will shatter the record of 1.99 million pay-per-view purchases, if not the non-heavyweight record of 1.4 million.
Throughout the run-up to the bout, Mayweather played the gleeful bad guy, trash-talking and taunting, while De La Hoya played his serious foil. On Saturday night, though, Mayweather said he was a good guy who loves his children and feeds the homeless and battered women.
But he audaciously entered the ring wearing an enormous sombrero and trunks that were the color of the Mexican flag. De La Hoya, of course, is Mexican-American and entered to the sound of Mexican music.
When Schaefer was asked if the scorecard snafu resulted from one or more judges being unable to distinguish one boxer form another, he said with a laugh, “Well, Floyd was wearing a Mexican outfit.”
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