LAS VEGAS — WBC welterweight beltholder Floyd Mayweather Jr. called former promoter and Top Rank CEO Bob Arum “a professional liar,” spent nearly 15 minutes on the subject of Manny Pacquiao and performance enhancing drugs, and also spoke poignantly about growing up poor as a child.

All of the above, and more, were subjects addressed by Mayweather for more than an hour before a small gathering of reporters on Tuesday in a side room at the MGM Grand shortly after his arrival at the site of Saturday night’s HBO Pay Per View televised clash with WBA junior middleweight belt owned by Miguel Cotto.

Pacquiao has an ongoing lawsuit against Mayweather accusing him of defamation, asserting that the fighter has continued to insinuate publicly that Pacquiao’s success over eight weight classes is the result of having used performance-enhancing drugs.

Mayweather insisted that he and his his opponents were tested before his past two victories over Shane Mosley in May and Victor Ortiz, in September, under Olympic-style random drug testing of urine and blood that was conducted by United States Anti-Doping Agency.

Mayweather (42-0, 26 knockouts) is pursuing his eighth major title in a fifth weight class opposite Cotto (37-2, 30 KOs), who is also being subject to random drug testing.

Much of what Mayweather said is mentioned in a report by Yahoo!Sports, an excerpt of which is as follows:

“When my career is over, anything can happen and my health is more important than anything. I’m not saying nobody is, or nobody is not doing it. But my health is more important than anything. Guess what? When my career is over, if I’m hurt, or something is going on, because something has happened in a fight, I can’t come to you and say, ‘Yo, I need you to pay my rent for this month. I need you to pay my bills for this month. I need you to pay my car note. I need you to put my kids through school,'” said Mayweather.

“So, my health is more important. So, you’re an American, right? I’m an American. I was in the Olympics. I represented the red, white and blue. You know what the American writers should say? ‘Well, why is this guy from another country coming over here and making money [and] taking it back to his country?’ Once again, I’m feeding American citizens every day. All I ask is, give a little blood, give a little urine. That’s a crime?”

Other fighters have followed suit.

Mosley and WBC junior middleweight beltholder Saul Alvarez are being drug tested leading up to their match up on the Mayweather-Cotto undercard, as are IBF/WBA junior welterweight beltholder Lamont Peterson and Amir Khan for their May 19 rematch.

Mayweather also touched on the fact that in 2003, Mosley admitted that he injected the steroids, “the cream,” and, “the clear,” but said that he did so unknowingly after having been supplied the drugs by BALCO founder, Victor Conte, through a relationship with his former strength trainer, Daryl Hudson.

“You see what happened when [Mosley] was doing it. What happened to fighters when he was juicing? He was running through fighters. Then all of a sudden, guess what?” said Mayweather.

“I spoke on it and when I spoke on it, everybody was like, ‘Ah, Floyd’s just scared.’ Then, when you took it off of him and put him in front of me, what did he do? Got killed.”

Photos by Gene Blevins, Hogan Photos/Golden Boy Promotions

Lem Satterfield can be reached at [email protected]