Mayweather Tees Off on Gerena : Boxing: WBC super featherweight champion retains title with seventh-round TKO.

He has accomplished pretty much everything a fighter three years into his career can in dominating his division, remaining undefeated and winning a world title.

Still, Floyd Mayweather Jr. feels slighted.

The lack of a big-money payday has made him a tad perturbed of late.

Saturday night, Mayweather took out his frustrations on Carlos Gerena in a fight that amounted to little more than target practice. Mayweather retained his WBC super featherweight championship by TKO when the bout in the Mandalay Bay’s intimate South Pacific Ballroom was stopped after the seventh round by referee Richard Steele on the advice of ringside doctor Flip Homansky.

While Gerena took shot after shot, he continually talked trash to Mayweather.

“I think he was trying to get me out of my game plan,” said Mayweather, who earned $500,000 while improving to 22-0, with 17 knockouts. “I just stayed focused and listened to my corner.”

Coming into the fight, however, much had been made of the fact that while Mayweather is considered one of the best fighters in the world, he still takes a back seat, money-wise, to Top Rank stablemate Oscar De La Hoya.

In fact, even though De La Hoya’s showdown against Felix Trinidad won’t go down until Saturday, there was seemingly more hype for that bout than for the Mayweather fight at hand. And it had more to do with the omnipresent signs and shirts promoting De La Hoya-Trinidad than with the Mariachi Festival happening down the hall at the hotel’s events center.

The perceived lack of respect only made Mayweather more focused and set Gerena up for the beating.

Combining speed with power, Mayweather knocked Gerena down twice in the first round, catching him with a right cross that sent Gerena sprawling before tagging him with a pair of left hooks. Both knockdowns occurred with less than 30 seconds remaining in the round.

The remaining six rounds consisted of nothing more than Mayweather teeing off on Gerena’s face with a steady stream of right crosses. Mayweather led, 70-61, on all three judges’ cards at the time of the stoppage.

So serious was Mayweather early on that he didn’t start juking and jiving until the fifth round.

“I knew he was going to come straight at me,” said the 22-year-old Mayweather, who moved to Las Vegas from Grand Rapids, Mich., three years ago after winning a bronze medal at the Atlanta Olympics. “I knew he came to fight but I wasn’t worried.”

Gerena’s record dropped to 34-3.

Earlier, Freddie Norwood survived a ninth-round knockdown and a nasty cut above his left eye to retain his WBA featherweight title by unanimous decision over Juan Manuel Marquez.

“I wasn’t trying to knock him out,” said Norwood, who is 35-0-1. “I wanted to make it last.”

Marquez (29-2) was upset with the decision.

“He ran like a thief in the night,” Marquez said. “Every time I hit him, he complained to the referee.”

Also on the card: Nicolas Cervera of Pivijay, Colombia, stopped Francisco Mendez of Bacobampo, Mexico, by TKO after the seventh round in a super welterweight bout; Maurice Harris of Newark, N.J., won a lackluster heavyweight fight by unanimous decision over Israel Cole of Los Angeles; and Pam Barker of Henderson, Nev., beat Elisha Olivas of Denver by unanimous decision in a four-round women’s super flyweight bout.