Mystery meat has a first name, it’s O-S-C-A-R

LAS VEGAS -- Do they give refunds if one of the fighters becomes ill and unable to fight?

It’s a little after 2, Oscar has just finished more than two hours of interviews and it’s time for lunch. His food has been carefully prepared for him by a nutritionist for the last four months, and 24 hours before weigh-in, there are only two empty pans on the stove and no nutritionist.

Freddie Roach, his trainer, says later, “had it been me, I would have gone crazy.”

Oscar opens the refrigerator and starts scrounging for a meal. He begins unwrapping packages, one by one, until he finds some roast beef. No telling how long it’s been there.

He makes himself a sandwich, washes it down with coconut juice and starts putting meat to bread again. The head of his security detail appears alarmed and picks up the beef to smell it.

“Hard to know if beef has gone bad,” he says, and this is a guy who has allowed authorities to taser him just to see how it feels, but he’s not about to eat bad meat. I guess Oscar’s food tester is also otherwise occupied.

It’ll be hours before we know if the beef was good or bad. Oscar elects to take no chances and continues to train, reporting to the gym and playing a tape of his sister, Ceci, singing the song he’ll hear when he enters the arena Saturday night.

He’s already dismissed a complaint from the Mayweather camp about the gloves for the fight. Mayweather wants the ones with padding; Oscar not only prefers the “punchers’ gloves” but had it written in the contract that both sides signed.

“The padded gloves are better for defense, so when someone throws a punch, it’s like hitting a pillow,” says Roach. “That’s why Mayweather wants them.”

Oscar’s intent is to be the aggressor. He’s not thinking defense. He’s been trained by a guy dealing with Pugilist’s Parkinson’s Syndrome because he was always on the attack.

“I took a lot of shots to the head while fighting,” Roach says. “The crowd liked it. My best defense was a good offense, but when I got older and slowed down, it didn’t work well.”

He walks lopsided because his left toe hits the ground rather than his left heel. He has tremors. When he looks forward, his neck sticks out like a tortoise. His speech sometimes is slurred.

Feel sorry for him, and well, he still has a good right. Oscar dropped his guard early in training, and Roach popped him in the mouth.

“Sliced my tongue,” Oscar says.

“He shouldn’t have dropped his guard,” Roach says.

Roach’s biggest payday in 54 fights was $13,000. He’s training a guy now who is guaranteed a minimum of $23 million.

“I took a close look at Oscar when we started to see if there were any signs” of Parkinson’s, Roach says. “Haven’t seen anything, but I’ll be watching. People stay around too long. It’s addicting. But it was all I knew; I was not an educated person.”

Oscar, though, is now listening to Roach as if he’s some kind of professor as they go through the fight as Roach sees it unfolding.

“I think the early part of the fight is going to be tough on us,” Roach says, “and we could possibly be behind after the first six rounds. But we have a plan.”

Oscar seems quieter, or maybe it’s the beginning of a stomachache. Someone asks about Freddie, and Oscar lights up. “I knew it the first time we talked and he told me this was a must-win situation,” Oscar says.

Roach, 47, has taken only two vacations in his life and will be back to work in his gym on Vine and Santa Monica on Monday at 8.

“It’s a must-win situation because it’s good against the bad,” says Roach. Mayweather Jr. “is not a good role model. We can’t let this happen to America, to the general public. We have to win this fight.”

MIAMI’S DWYANE Wade would like tickets. “I’ll look for him,” says Oscar’s business partner, Richard Schaefer.

What if Kobe Bryant calls? “I’ll look harder for him,” Schaefer says.

What if Shaq calls? “He’ll get them,” he says.

THE OFFERS began at $5,000: Wear our logo on a baseball cap at the Kentucky Derby and we hand you money.

“A great way to earn a quick buck,” says trainer Doug O’Neill, in his first Derby and saddling two horses, Great Hunter and Liquidity. “And if we got into the winner’s circle,” well, there was the added promise of more money.

Doug’s friend, Mark Verge, had an idea, though, and that usually costs Doug money. Why not wear a Mattel Children’s Hospital at UCLA baseball cap instead?

“Just like that,” Verge says, “Doug is talking about the hospital, and how crazy someone would be to be nervous about a horse race when you have parents sitting next to the bed of a sick child. So give me the hat, Doug says.”

Dr. Kathleen Sakamoto, boss lady on the cancer pediatric ward, sends off a box of them to Louisville, and if you watch closely, grooms and everyone else connected to team O’Neill will be wearing blue Mattel baseball caps.

“I’m going to be proud to wear that hat,” O’Neill says. “Who knows? Maybe it’s a karma deal and it’ll give the horse a little extra oomph down the stretch.

“You know, almost everyone has been touched by cancer. My older brother, Dan, the toughest of us four boys, had this little thing on his toe seven years ago. Fast forward six months, it’s worse and a doctor is telling him to get his things in order. At age 38.”

A year to the day he learned he was battling melanoma, Dan died. Then it was brother Denny, who had to contend with cancer. Denny’s cancer is in remission now, and so these are good times again for the O’Neill clan.

And it sparks an idea, which thrills O’Neill. From now on, anyone who donates to the hospital is going to get a cap -- a badge of honor, if you will. Each hat will also be signed with pen or finger paints by one of the kids in the hospital.

“What if we run out of hats or kids to sign them?” Sakamoto says.

And that’s a bad thing?

T.J. Simers can be reached at t.j.simers@latimes.com. To read previous columns by Simers, go to latimes.com/simers.