Floyd Mayweather looking forward to ‘doing a little business’ in London. The 10-time world champion, whose strength in the ring is matched by his mighty earning power out of it, can’t wait to come to the capital.

The biggest earner in sport is coming to town in six weeks’ time. If you’re thinking of Lionel Messi, Tiger Woods or Lebron James, think again.

Floyd “Money” Mayweather takes the business of making cash so seriously that the undefeated world welterweight and world super welterweight boxing champion sees his profession as less about sport and more about business.

As it turns out, he has proven to be rather good at both.

The 37-year-old hopes to do “a little business” when he arrives in London for a flying visit in early June. “I plan to have some dinners and some meetings with the future in mind,” he explains after another punishing workout at the Mayweather Boxing Gym in the Chinatown district of Las Vegas.

“I also hope to meet some of my British fans who have always been so good to me, shake a few hands and have some photos taken. I remember when I fought Ricky Hatton and the reception we both got before and after the fight in the UK. If it’s anything like last time I visited London I’ll get mobbed in the street but I’m happy to handle that.”

He may well be when he considers the power he now flexes borne out of his success both in and outside the ring.

“This is business,” says the man, who raked in £43.7m last year, putting him top of the ESPN list of the world’s highest-paid athletes of 2013. “It always has been. I need to put food on the table. It’s self-preservation. I had a promoter once but I had a game plan so I left him, took up my own business and, $400m later, here we are.”

Money is never far from anything to do with the 5ft 8in, 147lb superstar, from his chosen nickname to the name he has anointed the team of supporters and advisers around him. The letters ‘TMT’ adorn the two training rings at the Sin City club, the ropes and most of the clothing worn by those keeping an intent eye on their man as he makes final preparations for Maidana. The letters stand for ‘The Money Team’.

It is not hard to work out just why the man is so driven by money, and so good at using his vocation to generate it.

His father, Floyd Senior, now his trainer, was a boxer good enough to face Sugar Ray Leonard. His uncle, Roger, also one of his main trainers today, was a two-time world champion as a super featherweight. Another uncle, Jeff, was also an accomplished fighter.

“I’ve never had a job,” explains the kid who has taken the Mayweather name to a whole, new level. “I never needed to. I turned pro as a 20-year-old, won a world title a year later and remained a world champion ever since.

“It is all I have ever known. Boxing’s in my genes. I come from a fighting background. My dad and both my uncles were good boxers. I’m blessed with the art of war.”

It meant he was wearing boxing gloves by the age of two, not long after he first learned to walk, and training in a gym by seven. The ring would soon become a haven for a kid whose father would be jailed for selling cocaine, whose mother was a drug addict and whose aunt died of needle-induced AIDS.

When his father was freed he would beat up his boy in the quest for excellence in the gym, while at home in New Jersey, often without electricity, sharing a room with six others and a yard littered with syringes, Mayweather would dream of his escape route.

“I don’t forget those days,” he says. “People look at me now and have no idea. It’s why I’ve worked so hard to leave them all behind me. It’s why I’ll never stop.”

Floyd Mayweather’s record may be important to him. “I want to be regarded as the best boxer there’s ever been,” he announces, as he throws his hood over his head and drives off into the Las Vegas night.

But it is his legacy that really counts. “Even more, I want to be seen as the smartest.”

Would Floyd Mayweather have gotten knocked out if he continued boxing beyond his 50-0 record, or was he really just too good for his weight class? He seems more like a tag & run fighter. Hits you with a lovetap, then quickly runs away.