Why Mosley Is a Good Match for Pacman at BetLM

Why Mosley Is a Good Match for Pacman

LAS VEGAS – On a bright and sunny Feb­ru­ary day in the nation’s cap­i­tal, the best fighter in the world met in the morn­ing with the major­ity leader of the Sen­ate and then in mid-afternoon found him­self alone with his wife in the Oval Office, being greeted by the Pres­i­dent of the United States.

To say that box­ing pro­moter Bob Arum was effu­sive after pulling off that daily dou­ble would be an under­state­ment of epic proportions.

Hav­ing pho­tographs of Manny Pac­quiao on the floor of the Sen­ate being hon­ored by Sen. Harry Reid and then sto­ries of his trip to the White House to meet with Pres­i­dent Obama were more valu­able than gold to Arum, who was on a media tour to pro­mote Pacquiao’s pay-per-view bout with Shane Mosley on Sat­ur­day in the head­liner of a card at the MGM Grand Gar­den Arena.

“They loved him,” Arum said. “They (exple­tive) loved him.”

Arum wasn’t talk­ing about Pac­quiao, the Fil­ipino con­gress­man and pound-for-pound cham­pion who puts his WBO wel­ter­weight belt on the line. Rather, he is speak­ing of Mosley, who is 0–1-1 in his last two fights and who has taken a beat­ing in the media for being cho­sen as Pacquiao’s opponent.

Too old, they said. Past his prime. No longer competitive.

If Arum had any doubts about the suc­cess of his pay-per-view, how­ever, they were alle­vi­ated on this crisp and clear winter’s day. Mosley may yet prove to be over the hill, or too old, or sim­ply not good enough for Pacquiao.

But Arum can smell a pay-per-view suc­cess from miles away and he’s like a shark zero­ing in on blood when he does. While Pac­quiao was cavort­ing with the nation’s power bro­kers, Mosley was dis­patched to the New York Knicks’ prac­tice and later to the ESPN stu­dios in Bris­tol, Conn., to help drum up a lit­tle extra inter­est in the bout.

He turned out to be as big a hit in those places as Pac­quiao was in Wash­ing­ton, D.C. And while Mosley isn’t nearly the fighter he was a decade ago, Arum is more con­vinced than ever that he is the right man at the right time for Pacquiao.

Mosley, who was briefly con­sid­ered the world’s best pound-for-pound boxer in the early days of this cen­tury, is con­vinced he wouldn’t have got­ten the match against Pac­quiao had he been more impres­sive against either, or both of, his last two oppo­nents, Floyd May­weather Jr. and Ser­gio Mora.

He was blown out by May­weather on May 1, 2010, los­ing 11 of 12 rounds and los­ing them badly. He then was very mediocre in set­tling for a split draw with Mora in September.

Mosley is con­stantly reminded of those per­for­mances, as if they’ll deter­mine how he’ll fare against Pac­quiao on Sat­ur­day. But he said they served a greater pur­pose nonetheless.

“I don’t think they will have any­thing to do with what I do against Pac­quiao because styles make fights,” Mosley said. “But if it wasn’t for those two fights, I prob­a­bly wouldn’t be here today. So those fights were needed.”

Pac­quiao has aver­aged over one mil­lion buys per fight in his last five out­ings and has got­ten so pop­u­lar that he could sell that many against just about any­one. But Arum picked Mosley in Decem­ber over other alter­na­tives like Juan Manuel Mar­quez or Andre Berto because he felt that the pub­lic was more aware of Mosley than they were of any other poten­tial opponent.

The more the pub­lic is aware of the oppo­nent, the bet­ter the odds are for the suc­cess of a pay-per-view.

And given his pair of wins over Oscar De La Hoya and notable fights against the likes of the late Ver­non For­rest, Winky Wright, Fer­nando Var­gas, Anto­nio Mar­gar­ito and May­weather, Mosley fit that bill.

Now, there are many who believe with every fiber of their being that Arum chose Mosley pre­cisely because he has a big name and is so past his prime that he has lit­tle chance to win. Using that the­ory, Mosley gives the pro­mo­tion the high­est name recog­ni­tion it could get for an oppo­nent while pre­sent­ing as lit­tle risk as pos­si­ble to Pacquiao.

Mosley and his trainer, Naazim Richard­son, aren’t sug­ar­coat­ing the chal­lenge they face. While it would help the pro­mo­tion if Mosley was full of bravado and repeat­edly bragged that he’d get a knock­out, that’s sim­ply not his style.

Richard­son him­self couldn’t help but heap praise upon Pac­quiao. He said he had trou­ble find­ing suit­able spar­ring part­ners for Mosley because there is no one out there who can ade­quately emu­late Pacquiao.

“The last fighter I saw who fought like Pac­quiao was (Hall of Famer) Aaron Pryor,” Richard­son said. “If any­one was fight­ing like Pac­quiao, they’d be off some­where defend­ing their own title and they wouldn’t have time to come to our camp. So all you can do is pick ath­letes and ask them to bring in attrib­utes that are most com­mon to Pacquiao.”

Pryor ended his career with a 39–1 record and 35 knock­outs and a rep­u­ta­tion as one of the tough­est men of his era. The great Sugar Ray Leonard never fought Pryor and there are knowl­edge­able box­ing peo­ple who say it’s because Leonard knew he couldn’t han­dle Pryor.

What­ever the truth is, Richard­son knows that Mosley will be fac­ing a modern-day Pryor when they get into the ring on Sat­ur­day at the MGM.

“The rea­son I com­pare the two is that Aaron Pryor was an all-action fighter,” he said. “He had a decent punch, but he was all-action. You could just see his energy level was just extra­or­di­nary. And Pac­quiao brings the same level of energy into the ring. And it’s dif­fi­cult to answer because he’s so con­sis­tent. After he’s fought big­ger guys, his fights have got­ten eas­ier because the high-energy guys are at the lower weight classes. So when he’s fought big­ger guys, he’s actu­ally had an eas­ier time.”

Mosley won’t even come close to being crit­i­cal of Pac­quiao, but it doesn’t lessen his belief in him­self. He believes he was cho­sen because the Pac­quiao side essen­tially viewed him as an easy mark with a big name, but he feels he still has enough left to shock the oddsmakers.

Pac­quiao is an offen­sive fighter whom Mosley won’t have to find. When he fought May­weather last year, he badly hurt May­weather in the sec­ond round, but was unable to catch up to the defen­sive mas­ter the remain­der of the fight.

This time, though, it’s a dif­fer­ent sce­nario. Pac­quiao will be in front of him, avail­able to be hit. He won’t have to look for Pac­quiao, because Pac­quiao will bring the fight to him.

That’s made Mosley highly con­fi­dent of victory.

“Well, I look at dif­fer­ent fights and I see in the (Pacquiao)-Margarito fight that Mar­gar­ito landed the most punches ever on Manny Pac­quiao,” Mosley said. “So if Mar­gar­ito is fast enough to land punches on Manny Pac­quiao, then I know I am fast enough to land punches on him.”

A win in the ring would land Mosley, who is earn­ing a guar­an­tee of $ 5 mil­lion, at least a few more multi-million-dollar pay­days. But Mosley was cho­sen mostly for his abil­ity to turn a box­ing match into an event.

Pri­vately, Top Rank offi­cials are opti­mistic that the fight can exceed the best pay-per-view per­for­mance of Pacquiao’s career, when he sold 1.25 mil­lion for a 2008 fight with De La Hoya.

And if Mosley can help push the num­ber close to 1.5 mil­lion, that would be the ulti­mate vic­tory regard­less of what hap­pens in the ring.

Related Posts:

• Richard­son Prep­ping Mosley for Fight of His Life
• Pac­quiao in Minor Car Acci­dent Before Mosley Fight
• Mosley Under­stands His Role Against Pacquiao
• Bar­gain DeJe­sus Sign­ing a Good Start for Epstein in Chicago
• Quote of the Day: Pres­i­dent Obama Is Pleased the NBA Sea­son Is Saved

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