The matinée-idol looks stare down from billboard posters all around this part of The Strip. “The World Awaits” the slogan says across the top and the man on the left has a bit of Rudolph Valentino about him.

Oscar De La Hoya’s remarkable career is built on his skills in the ring, but his good looks have never hurt his appeal and that he looks as good as he does at 34, after 15 years as a professional, is testament to his boxing ability.

The artist who created the poster of tomorrow’s WBC light-middleweight title defence against Floyd Mayweather Jr saw De La Hoya as something of a romantic lead and it seems to work. In a video promoting the bout called Who Are You Picking?, a wide-ranging vox pop was taken during the 11-city publicity tour. Male opinion was split between the pair, but all the women plumped for De La Hoya when asked whom they preferred.

De La Hoya is comfortably the most popular active boxer in the United States and this bout has captured the imagination here like none in recent memory. Sports Illustrated, the magazine, trumpeted it on its front page this week with the headline “The Fight To Save Boxing”.

De La Hoya does not believe that the sport needs saving, but that certain sections of the American sports media, which is obsessed with the initials NFL, MLB and NBA, may need reeducating.

“I think we’ve already saved the sport – I don’t think its lying on my shoulders,” De La Hoya said. “It’s not dying and it’s not dead. The [Joe] Calzaghe fight in Wales, where he had 35,000 people, or in Germany, where you can fill up 20,000-seater arenas no problem; boxing is alive and well, it’s just a matter of making the right fights.”

This bout is likely to make De La Hoya the biggest pay-per-view draw card in the sport’s history, surpassing Mike Tyson and Evander Holyfield, but finding new stars is not a worry to him.

“To be the pay-per-view champion feels pretty good – the scary part will be in the next 20 years someone will beat it,” De La Hoya said. “After I’m gone, I think it’s our duty as promoters to keep things going the way they are – bringing in sponsors and the people we are talking to. Boxing is nice and healthy.”

De La Hoya has been hot property since he won the lightweight gold medal at the Barcelona Olympic Games in 1992. Thereafter dubbed the Golden Boy, his mix of quick hands, boyish charisma, good looks and an engaging smile proved a winning combination, particularly among the Latino population of the US.

The De La Hoya of today, a multimillionaire who lives in Puerto Rico with his pop-star wife, Milly, is far removed from that Olympian, though. The son of Mexican immigrants, he grew up in a rough part of East Los Angeles. Until his wallet was stolen a few years ago, he had always carried a food stamp with him, a memory of his youth in poverty.

Something of a change for De La Hoya, then, from the promoter who reportedly offered Manny Pacquiao, the Filipino super-featherweight, a suitcase containing $350,000 in cash as an inducement to sign with his Golden Boy promotional company. There are some who believe that the company’s success is reliant on having its owner as an active boxer. This will be his first bout in a year, before which he had been inactive since 2004.

But the chance of facing Mayweather, 30, who is regarded by many as the best pound-for-pound boxer in the sport today, has got him motivated again. “Dana White [the president of the Ultimate Fighting Championship] said that Floyd Mayweather couldn’t put 2,000 people in an arena, but you need a great opponent to make it a great event,” De La Hoya said. “I think it’s a 70-30 split . . . he’s contributing 30 per cent. I’m going to have to go out and force the fight. If I don’t, people might not get their money’s worth.”

Despite being the event’s promoter, though, De La Hoya has not been sidetracked in his focus, even if he has sought advice in unusual places.

“Chuck Norris [the martial arts star] once told me that what you have to do is visualise the fight for many weeks and months, how it’s going to happen and try and do it in the ring,” he said. “When you have somebody that has those fast-twitch movements, like Mayweather, I kind of convert myself into that, too. I think a lot of people are going to be very surprised when they see an Oscar who will match his speed and maybe even surpass it. I don’t want to reveal strategy too much, but I don’t see this fight going the distance.”

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