Floyd Mayweather Snr believes age might already be catching up with his son Floyd Mayweather Jnr - but insists the American remains a bigger box office draw than arch-rival Manny Pacquiao.
Mayweather Jnr is currently preparing for a light middleweight meeting with Miguel Cotto in May as a super-fight against Pacquiao continues to prove impossible to arrange - with the Filipino set to meet Timothy Bradley in June.
With a showdown never agreed between the two stars, the debate about who is the superior boxer has only continued to grow and evolve - but Mayweather Snr believes there can be no doubt about which fighter is the more popular with the fans.
"It's been proven already that my son can sell more tickets than Pacquiao! It's been proven that on a couple of different occasions that my son can sell more tickets than Pacquiao," Mayweather Snr told radio show On The Ropes.
With Mayweather Jnr now 35 years old and Pacquiao just two years younger, time appears to be running out for the dispute to ever be resolved in the ring. Even if it a meeting does belatedly happen, Mayweather Snr fears neither fighter will still be at their peak.
"Age might be catching up with him [Mayweather Jnr] now. I'm pretty sure it's catching up with him. He's not Superman," he said. "He's not Superman or anything like that. He's a normal person just like we are and I'm pretty sure that age is going to catch up with all of us anyway, some just faster than others.
"Even though he keeps his body and stuff in good shape, you know I'm pretty sure that's going to have a big thing to do with it too."
Mayweather Jnr may be known as one of the greatest defensive boxers in the history of the sport, but his father wants him to change his style to make it more proactive as he brings down the curtain on an illustrious career. Otherwise, he fears at some point he could come unstuck against a hungry, energetic young brawler.
"I just wish my son would throw more punches now," he revealed. "It's not that he's old where he can't throw enough punches, because he can. Any time you get in shape you can do what you want to do. So I think that little Floyd can throw a lot more punches than he has. He has in the past, but he hasn't done that in quite a while now.
"He's just counterpunching now. It will be a clear win and he will win the fight [against Cotto], but the thing is his trouble is going to be with a guy that's consistently throwing punches. When you counterpunch you're only throwing maybe one punch or two punches. That's when you're countering somebody.
"That's when his problem will come in, when he's got somebody who's real, real busy, and that will more or less probably be with a younger guy."
Mayweather Snr also believes Cotto will prove his son's toughest test in a number of years.
"Well I think that Cotto will probably give little Floyd a better fight than any of the other guys in quite a while," he noted. "I'm not saying that Cotto's going to win, but I'm just saying that he'll probably get a better fight than he did from Shane [Mosley] and he'll probably get a better fight than he got from [Antonio] Margarito."
