It’s about the only time Oscar works for scale

LAS VEGAS -- The training is over. No more running. Now the wait begins.

Two hours before the afternoon weigh-in and Oscar De La Hoya opens a Dolce & Gabbana bag and pulls out three pairs of underwear. They’ll look cute on his baby.

“They’re for me,” he says, and in the privacy of one’s bedroom, who am I to say it’s not right for someone to look so silly in their skivvies?

Oscar says he intends to wear one of them to the weigh-in, which is going to attract a turn-away crowd of 7,000. Now I understand why they’re expecting a turn-away crowd.

He steps into a bathroom to try them on, yelling through the door, “You want me to come out and model them?” The guy is always looking for a fight.

He doesn’t like any of them, including the black pair no bigger than a hanky, or the ones with buttons down the front. Boxers, briefs or something Bozo might wear to finally get a date.

A Golden Boy employee returns from an emergency run to the Caesars Forum Shops a little later with two more pairs of underwear from Dolce & Gabbana. At $200 a pair, Oscar is already taking it in the shorts. He settles on something that Dwyre would get arrested for wearing in public.

For two hours in a MGM Grand Sky Loft, Oscar just sits there making small talk with his business partner and later his trainer.

“I might jog five miles tonight,” he says before saying he’s just kidding. “I’ll probably watch a movie -- ‘300’ would be good. It inspires me. Or maybe ‘Beaches,’ which really gets me going.” I can’t say for sure he’s kidding this time.

He has plans Sunday to have his 16-month-old son baptized, and then maybe look at a house in Pasadena. He promised his wife they’d live in Puerto Rico for three years. It has been five.

Oscar lights up when he hears his business partner, Richard Schaefer, has a brochure for the $15-million house that interests Oscar.

“Now you know why I have to keep fighting,” he says.

The talk shifts to the fight, and Oscar says, “I love this. It’s history, baby. I can see the light at the end of the tunnel and the chance to drink a Diet Coke, have an In-N-Out Burger, eat some tacos

Schaefer interrupts. “A Subway sandwich too. Come on, mention our sponsors,” and Oscar complies. “Yeah, and a shot of Cazadores tequila washed down with a Tecate beer.”

When it’s time to go, he’s surrounded by four bodyguards -- each the size of Texas. Oscar is driven from the back of the hotel to the front, and ushered inside for a last look by a physician. He says his torn rotator cuff and the wrist that has bothered him in the past are just fine.

He begins looking at the fight program, which will sell for $30. He’s more promoter now than boxer, while looking at the companies, such as Cartier, who are advertising.

“And then there’s this piece of garbage,” he says, pointing to an ad bought by Floyd Mayweather Jr., which reads: “The Floyd Mayweather story. God doesn’t make mistakes.”

Mayweather paid $1,000 for the ad, but has yet to pay his bill. It doesn’t bode well for the $1,000 he’s promised to pay Page 2 if he loses.

Fans began lining up for the 2:30 weigh-in at 9, and word comes that something like 2,000 have been turned away. Oscar has a 31-inch waist, and if I thought the threat of a public weigh-in would do the same for the wife, I’d give it a try.

Oscar takes the stage, and drops his drawers. I already know what everyone is going to see because I’m an investigative reporter.

As he moves toward the scale in his Dolce & Gabbana’s, Mayweather tries to approach him, but no one is paying attention to him. He looks lost.

Oscar weighs in at 154. He doesn’t understand it. He thought he’d be less. He forgets about the two roast beef sandwiches he ate a day earlier.

He raises both fists to the crowd, throwing an uppercut with his left hand, because as everyone knows and I remind him later, he has no right. “You’ll be surprised,” he counters.

He moves to a table covered with boxing gloves, some white, black, red and green and tries them on -- settling on black with red trim running down his wrist. They’ll go nicely with his red trunks and red boots. He always has an eye on fashion.

He returns to the home he’s staying in outside of town. There’s an empty Chanel box on the counter. He shows me the credit card name on the receipt; it’s his wife’s. Then he notices how much she spent. “It’s not good,” he says.

Because Page 2 has so much experience eating big meals, he invites me as he did a year ago to join him for his feast of steak, pasta with orange vodka sauce and salad after the weigh-in.

“This is what it’s all about,” he says, and he’s eating now as if he’d like to have that Page 2 look.

When he finishes, there is time for one more chat before we’ll meet again in his dressing room three hours before the fight.

His game plan, he says, calls for speed, and maintaining his weight at 157 come fight time. That might surprise some who think he should take advantage of his size in comparison to the little shrimp he’s fighting. Most observers also expect a 12-round fight to work against him if he doesn’t knock out Mayweather early.

He and his trainer disagree. Oscar will take the attack to Mayweather’s body with the intent of breaking him down. Oscar might not look good early on.

“Mayweather is the best boxer in the world, but he can’t finish,” Freddie Roach says. “He’s not that big of a puncher. He’s not a complete fighter.”

Mayweather likes to move in, throw one punch at a time, “and I guarantee you,” Roach says, “at some point he will jump in to throw a punch and will jump into Oscar’s right hand.”

Roach says Oscar has tired in the past because he always followed his competitors around the ring. It was a flaw in Oscar’s game. But no longer.

Oscar pushes away his plate. He replays the fight over and over again in his head, and he says it always ends the same way.

“I envision knocking him out in the 10th round,” Oscar says.

A fella can dream, can’t he?

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