The good news for Shane Mosley is that a blockbuster mega-fight against Floyd Mayweather, Jr. may be on the horizon. The bad news for Shane Mosley is that the cancellation of his title bout January 30th against WBC Champion, Andre Berto, will guarantee that he’ll have been inactive for well over a year, which is not good for a fighter in the twilight of his career. If Shane is seen doing back-flips in the hallways of Golden Boy Promotions’ California offices, it’s perfectly understandable because the Berto cancellation opens the door to a far more lucrative fight, a fight the boxing public much prefers over a unification tilt with the relatively green WBC 147 lb. champion.
HBO has a May 1st Pay-Per-View date open for a major fight. Mayweather and Mosley are currently without dance partners. Manny Pacquiao is scheduled to duke it out with former champion, Joshua Clottey in March, and won’t be available to return to the ring until September at the earliest, due to political obligations in his homeland of the Philippines. And as odd as it seems, the winner of a Mayweather-Mosley fight would be widely-recognized as boxing’s new pound-for-pound king, considering the fact that Mosley is already the top dog at 147, and Floyd defeated the #2 pound-for-pound man, Juan Manuel Maquez, this past September. So in that sense, Pacquiao-Clottey and Mayweather-Mosley can be perceived as the “semi-finals”, with the “finals” to be held later this year.
It’s ironic that Floyd and Shane are left only with each other at this point, especially since Mayweather and Pacquiao opted to forgo a 147 lb. duel with “the man who beat the man” in 2009. Now, by default, and as a result of the contentious negotiations for the Mayweather-Pacquiao fight, we’re left with the possibility of Mayweather-Mosley for welterweight supremacy, which is the fight everyone should have been pining for all along. Coming off a fine performance last January in winning the WBA belt from Antonio Margarito, Mosley was hotter than molten lead, but he allowed the momentum generated from that victory to fizzle, as he sat on the sidelines hoping to sign the winner of Pacquiao-Hatton, a scenario even a blind man could have seen as a long shot. So as Shane idled, unable to land the big money fights he felt he deserved, much of his bargaining power diminished, the Margarito victory but a distant memory. Snubbed by Mayweather and Pacquiao, Mosley found himself on the outside looking in – and much of it was his own fault. But the sport of boxing often makes for strange bedfellows, as we’ve so often seen in the past. And now Mayweather-Mosley is looking more and more like a marriage of convenience made in heaven.
Another “twist” to a potential Mayweather-Mosley bonanza is the fact that it would effectively steal a bit of “thunder” from Top Rank and Bob Arum, who have seemingly been involved in nearly every major promotion over the last two years. Additionally, the winner of Mayweather-Mosley would come to the bargaining table with an inordinate amount of leverage in any negotiations for a Pacquiao bout, should Manny survive his scrap with Clottey.
It wasn’t so long ago that Floyd insisted that any chances of a prospective Mosley fight had died when Mosley twice turned down the opportunity over the last decade, but with the chance to make a very loud statement to Arum, Pacquiao and company with a victory over Mosley, Mayweather is sure to quickly develop amnesia and warm to the idea of rekindling talks with Golden Boy for a dance with Mosley on May 1st.
Our hearts go out to Andre Berto, his family and the people of Haiti, in the wake of the catastrophic earthquake that hit its capital city of Port-au-Prince. He’ll be back in action later this year, rested and ready to re-enter the 147 lb. fray. And as unfortunate as the circumstances of the cancellation are, career-wise, it may very well turn out to be best that he decided not to go through with the Mosley fight, as the chances of a Berto victory in two weeks were prohibitively slim to begin with. He’s young and will be a force in the division for years to come, but right now, the welterweight division needs to be settled by the “big dawgs”, Mayweather, Mosley and Pacquiao.
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