They say if you spend enough time in a place you become that place. So it is for Floyd Mayweather and Las Vegas, the desert town of six hundred thousand souls he's called home for nearly all of his adult life, a place whose excess and chaos and seductive mythology he's come to embody.

That truth is writ large from the moment one's taxi bends out of McCarren International Airport onto East Tropicana Road towards the oversized likeness of Mayweather's face and torso plastered on the side of the MGM Grand, visible for miles, beneath the headline: HOME OF THE CHAMPION.

Manny Pacquiao turns to song while aiming to lead Mayweather a dance

Technically speaking Mayweather hails from Grand Rapids, Michigan, but there's no question he enjoys the hometown advantage in Saturday's long-awaited showdown with Manny Pacquiao. Never was that more clear than with Tuesday's grand arrival at the MGM Grand Garden Arena, which is probably why Pacquiao declined to attend in favor of a more intimate fan rally in a ballroom at the nearby Mandalay Bay.

The grand arrival is by tradition the unofficial kickoff of fight week, a relatively casual opportunity for photogs to snap pictures and fans to see the fighters, typically held in the MGM Grand lobby. Yet Tuesday's spin on what's become a staid ritual was vintage Mayweather – a living, breathing infomercial for his The Money Team lifestyle brand that was bound (or designed?) to leave Pacquiao feeling like the promotional B-side.

First a hype man spent 90 minutes yelling exhortations over ear-splitting hip-hop at the few thousand fans who'd filed into the bleachers, many of whom wore the TMT snapbacks retailing for $48 in the MGM lobby.