The future of marketing in boxing could be defined in the weeks leading to the May 5 super welterweight bout between Oscar De La Hoya and unbeaten Floyd Mayweather Jr.

The bout, signed on Monday, has the potential to be the largest-grossing fight in history. Richard Schaefer, the CEO of Golden Boy Promotions, said the goal is for it to become the first bout ever to sell 2 million pay-per-view units.

Given that a deal was signed nearly six months before the bout, Schaefer said sponsorship opportunities exist that will help propel the fight to stratospheric levels in terms of pay-per-view sales.

Ross Greenburg, the president of HBO Sports, declined to speak about the De La Hoya-Mayweather fight Tuesday, through a spokesman citing the desire not to deflect attention from the pay-per-view bout Saturday between Manny Pacquiao and Erik Morales at the Thomas & Mack Center.

But while promoter Bob Arum is optimistic that the Pacquiao-Morales rubber match will reach 400,000 buys, even the most cautious estimate has De La Hoya-Mayweather doing 21/2 times that number.

In May, Greenburg told the Review-Journal that he thought the bout would do well in excess of 1 million units.

"It is a very big fight," said Shelly Finkel, a prominent boxing manager who has no stake in the fight. "They're going to do big, big numbers."

Four previous De La Hoya fights have sold 1 million or more pay-per-view units, and his Sept. 18, 1999, bout with Felix Trinidad set the non-heavyweight record at 1.4 million. He also sold 1 million for bouts with Shane Mosley, Bernard Hopkins and Fernando Vargas, and did 975,000 for his May bout with Ricardo Mayorga.

"This is a big fight, and Oscar has done big numbers in the past when he's had this kind of a fight," Finkel said. "What you have to determine is, what does Mayweather bring that will take them above what they did with, say, Fernando, Shane and Bernard?"

Schaefer said potential corporate sponsors are beating a path to his office, hoping to be involved. He already has deals in place with Tecate Beer, Bacardi and Southwest Airlines, and he said those companies will produce unprecedented fight-related marketing. In addition, he said he hopes to close sponsorship deals with Cingular, Sony, Rock Star Energy Drinks and Coca-Cola.

"These companies have time now to do special marketing with in-store displays, CDs around the necks of bottles and that sort of thing, that they're not able to do when we announce a pay-per-view with just a two- to three-month lead time," Schaefer said. "By the time this fight happens, there isn't going to be anyone who isn't aware of this fight."