OUTSIDE, "The Money Team" were doing what they do best.

Spending. The blackjack tables and roulette wheels of the MGM Grand were swamped as Saturday night turned to Sunday morning, supporters of Floyd "Money" Mayweather with TMT emblazoned across every item of clothing swarming through the casino. They were drunk on those two most intoxicating of substances - Vegas and victory.

But back inside the now eerily empty Grand Garden Arena, almost two hours after Mayweather had turned in a 48th defensive masterclass to thwart Manny Pacquiao and claim the Fight of the Century, there was to be another final frisson of victory.

The defeated if not quite downbeat Filipino was sitting alongside his support staff in the partially unassembled ring, explaining why a shoulder injury had hampered him and outlining how he believed he could still have won the welterweight unification fight that had captured the world's imagination. The rematch word had come up once or twice. Ahead of schedule, in stormed Mayweather and his entourage, the original Money Team, rather than the cultish disciples burning dollars outside.

Instead of perhaps standing aside to let Pacquiao complete his formalities or even the answer he has was half-way through providing, Mayweather Jnr and Snr and a couple of advisers climbed the stage. The champion was almost polite in his invasion, shaking hands with all and sundry, before stepping up to the microphone and commandeering the conference. On a night of domination, it was a final reminder. Pacquiao and his crew skulked off the side of the stage, off into the Las Vegas night seeking the impossible in Sin City - a quiet corner of contemplation.

Mayweather did not so much as glance over his shoulder at the vanquished opponent. The master of self-promotion was off and rolling and more directly combative at the lectern than he had been inside the same ring an hour or so earlier. He railed at the assembled press corps, wading in on a myriad of perceived slights in the marathon build-up to this fight.

"I made you guys eat your words," he poked. "So tomorrow I want you guys to [write the] truth. I want y'all to write you came here non-believers, and you left believers. I'm going to spend all day tomorrow reading [the] reports."

We'll go out on a safe-looking limb and assume that Sunday at the Mayweather Mansion in fact proved not to be a lazy one spent perusing the papers by the pool. That's just not in keeping with the victor's lifestyle, where excess trumps everything else.

What had continually upset him were pre-fight observations that he had waited until Pacquiao was a much less lethal prospect before stepping in the ring with him. Yet Saturday night proved that hypothesis in spades. When this super fight first came into view around the turn of the decade, Pacquiao had only recently entered his 30s. All these years later in Las Vegas he had finally caught up with Mayweather, but time had caught up with the Filipino first. Mayweather's imperious ability to evade and control, control and evade proved to be just as impressive, as decisive at 38 as it was at 32. Yet Pacquiao's approach at 36, allowing for the troublesome shoulder injury, was nowhere near as effective as it might have been at 30.

In the rush for instant analysis, lists of "five things we learned" from the fight were being published before the fighters had even left the ring. Almost universally, one of these lessons was that Pacquiao and had no Plan B, that when the fight slowly, steadily slipped from his grasp after his ferocious fourth-round attack on Mayweather, Pacquiao couldn't arrest the slide. When he entered the final two rounds needing a knockout or at the very least a couple of knock-downs, he couldn't muster it. Yet this was hardly a revelation that came flying out of the Vegas night. Pacquiao hadn't recorded a knock-out since 2009.

His salvo in the fourth round stood alone as the one true time in the fight that Pacquiao buzzed Mayweather, knocked him back on his heels and made him at least fleetingly consider that fight number 48 might not go the way of all the others. Freddie Roach had drilled it into his fighter that the ropes would be their route to glory. As the fight edged towards its half-way point Pacquiao cut off the ring again and pushed Mayweather to the fringes. A minute remained in the sixth round and Pacquiao was teeing off, unleashing volleys of shots. But Mayweather had put up the walls and came strolling stoically out of two shuddering salvoes by shaking his head "No". Not today Manny. Not ever.

The fourth and the sixth rounds were the only two that unanimously went Pacquiao's direction according to the judges' scorecards. While Glenn Feldman and Burt Clements - and a lot of the amateur observers - both saw fit to award him the ninth and tenth too, Dave Moretti never scored another round the Filipino's way. The final line read 116-112, 116-112, 118-110.

Pacquiao only briefly raised a hand at the final bell. Mayweather jumped on a second rope and told the hostile hordes what they already knew - he was still undefeated. They in turn told him what he already knew - he was still unloved. That is the victory that Mayweather can never claim, winning a place in the public's heart.

With so many of Hollywood's heaviest hitters, pillars of pop culture from Jay Z and Beyonce to Clint Eastwood, Robert de Niro and Justin Bieber, packed into the MGM Grand, this fight of the generation doubled up as a night of the generation, the selfie generation, that is. (Roach and Pacquiao even interrupted their ring walk to take a quick camera-phone snap.) Mayweather longs to be remembered as the TBE, the best ever. He wants to go down in the books as pound-for-pound, the pre-eminent professional sportsman of this same generation. Instead, the next generation will look back and recall a fighter who was the most hated figure of the previous sporting era.

That has nothing to do with what he does with his fists inside the ring, of course. It has to do with he has done to women with his fists outside of it. It also has to do with the incessant, omni-references to profits that have long since disgusted the masses.

"I was born a winner. I'm going to die a winner," said Mayweather as he showed his $100m fight cheque to TV cameras. "I was brought up within my family all we knew was to be first. Win, win, win, that's all we knew."

Fights, belts, profits. Floyd Mayweather has won them all. Everything but hearts.