Floyd Mayweather has insisted that he always wanted to face Manny Pacquiao and claimed he had the final say on the mega-fight going ahead.
After months of negotiations, the long-awaited showdown between the two biggest stars in boxing will finally take place in Las Vegas on May 2.
Previous attempts to match the American with his pound-for-pound rival Pacquiao had fallen apart after rows about purse splits and blood testing.
But Mayweather has dismissed claims he tried to avoid the Filipino fighter and suggested he played a decisive role in the agreement between both camps.
“A lot of times you hear certain things from the media, certain things from the critics, the writers that are not true, that’s totally false,” he told SHO Sports.
“We tried to make this fight happen in the past. The teams kept bumping heads because of random blood and urine testing, then about being the A-side and who’s going to be the B-side.
“So, it was a lot of problems in the past. We finally resolved everything, the teams got on the same page and we made the fight happen.
“Everyone wants to keep talking about how this fight happened. This fight happened because of me. This fight didn’t happen because of Manny Pacquiao – because I asked for the fight myself.
“We had to choose an opponent for May and I said what better opponent to choose – and so we chose Pacquiao.”