Floyd Mayweather cemented his reputation as the best pound-for-pound boxer in the world - although Oscar De La Hoya ran him close - as the 30-year-old Pretty Boy won the WBC super-welterweight title by split decision after 12 rounds at the MGM Grand Garden Arena.

Jerry Roth and Chuck Giampa scored for Mayweather by margins of 115-113 and 116-112 respectively but the third judge, Tom Kaczmarek, made De La Hoya the winner by 115-113. The fight was close without rising either to the level of a classic or the stinker that many people had feared. Mayweather’s speed, youth and defensive skills won out against the aggressive, more powerful De La Hoya, though the 34-year-old deposed title-holder believed that he had done enough to win.

“After a fight you either feel like a winner or a loser and, standing here and in the ring immediately afterwards, I didn’t feel I lost,” said De La Hoya. “I came out to do what I had to do. I had to fight and put the pressure on him and I feel like I did that for much of the fight. My jab failed me tonight, I didn’t throw it enough and I don’t know why but perhaps it has to do with Mayweather’s style. He was difficult to pin down but I constantly made the running. If I hadn’t pressed forward constantly, there wouldn’t have been a fight.”

De La Hoya made the more assertive start, despite losing the opening round to Mayweather’s more accurate punching. Ominously, however, he was walking down the challenger and when his jab began to land in round two, backed up by several solid right crosses, the pro-De La Hoya crowd roared their approval. The ringside area contained an impressive array of stars including Denzel Washington, Jack Nicholson, Leonardo DiCaprio, Toby Maguire, Michael J Fox, Jennifer Lopez, Michael Jordan, Eddie Murphy, Matthew McConaughey, Eva Longoria and Will Ferrell but the real star power lay with the Golden Boy over the next couple of rounds. Repeatedly, he was able to back up Mayweather to the ropes and, although many of his punches missed as the challenger rolled his shoulders and picked them off, the momentum was in his hands. Mayweather was struggling to establish a rhythm that would take the play away from the naturally bigger man.

He found a way in the fifth, landing a right hand that De La Hoya later admitted had forced him to give ground and Mayweather backed it up with another right to the jaw. It proved to be a significant moment, for the smaller and lighter man increasingly had more success and he retained the initiative by frustrating De La Hoya’s efforts to overpower him into submission. Time and again he made the champion miss and, having lost his rhythm, De La Hoya neglected to use his jab the longer the fight went on.

“Oscar started crouching down to Mayweather’s level and stopped throwing the jab for some reason. He said he just couldn’t get it going again,” revealed his trainer, Freddie Roach. “Even so, Oscar had commanded the early part of the bout and it was up to Floyd to really take the fight away from us at that point and I don’t believe he really did.”

When Mayweather moved his hands in the middle rounds he did land the cleaner punches and, increasingly, he made De La Hoya miss, to the point where the 1992 Olympic gold medallist at lightweight was beginning to look like a tired, old fighter. A right hand by Mayweather at the end of the 10th round forced him to take several steps backwards and the 11th was another clear round for the challenger. Two of the judges gave the 12th and final round to De La Hoya, who went back on the front foot and flailed away at Mayweather’s head and body with both fists. Had the third judge, Jerry Roth, scored the round the same way the result would have been a draw but instead he gave the nod to Mayweather.

“I stayed on the periphery, made him miss and made it my fight. It was easy work for me,” said Mayweather. “He was rough and tough but he couldn’t beat the best. I could see the shots coming and stayed on the outside all night, boxed and made him miss. That’s what you call a masterpiece of boxing. He’s one of the best fighters of our era and I showed what I can do to one of the best fighters of our era.”

The official punch stats were conclusively in Mayweather’s favour, for he landed 207 punches to De La Hoya’s 122 and his percentage of power shots landed was 57% compared to 24% by the heavier-punching De La Hoya. The crowd, however, chanted, “Bull****,” when the decision was announced and De La Hoya refused to accept that he had been beaten by the superior fighter on the night. The richest non-heavyweight fight in pay-per-view history, the closeness of the official verdict seemed to make a rematch the clear likelihood but Mayweather insisted that he would keep to his pre-fight promise to walk away from the sport at the end of his 38th bout, having won his every fight.

“As of right now, Floyd Mayweather is officially retired from the sport of boxing,” declared Mayweather, who took home a $10million guaranteed purse. “I’ve done everything I wanted to do in the sport, I beat the best and I made a ton of money. I have nothing else to prove.”

De La Hoya said he would look at a tape of the fight before determining his future. “I want to see how my movements were and look at my timing and just assess how my body feels,” he said.

A purse of $25million and an even greater dividend for Golden Boy Promotions, which he owns, will sweeten the taste of defeat, though De La Hoya will not want to leave in this fashion. With defeats by Felix Trinidad, Shane Mosley (twice), Bernard Hopkins and now Mayweather, he has never won the big one. Mayweather, on the other hand, is now a world champion in five weight divisions from super-featherweight (9st 4lbs) through to super-welterweight (11st) and the song sung by his rap artist friend, 50 Cent, as he walked to the ring said it all: Straight To The Bank. His credit is that of one of the finest fighters of his era.

John Murray from Manchester produced a solid display on the undercard, overpowering and stopping Lorenzo Bethea from Atlantic City, New Jersey, at 0:28sec in the seventh round of a lightweight contest. The 22-year-old prospect, promoted by De La Hoya’s British partner, Mick Hennessy, wore down his American opponent by mixing up head and body combinations before the referee intervened.

His stablemate, John O’Donnell, was the shock victim of a second-round stoppage after being dropped in the opening round by Mexican opponent Christian Solano’s left hook to the top of the head. The Londoner never recovered his equilibrium and, as he made to throw a left hook midway through round two, he walked into a hard right and fell on his face before referee Joe Cortez waved the bout over.

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