After Floyd Mayweather Jr’s potential fight against Manny Pacquiao got cancelled, Money needed a new opponent. Well, now he’s got one in Shane Mosley. The two are scheduled to fight on May 1st of this year. Mosley is coming off a very impressive performance against Antonio Maragrito. In the fight against Margarito, Mosley was stronger, faster and better than Margarito as he knocked him out in the ninth round. It was a tremendous performance by Mosley and it got him back into the conversation of one of the best pound-for-pound fighters in the sport. But this is not the fight that people want to see. No offense to Mosley, he is a tremendous fighter and if Money doesn’t fight Pacman, than this may be the next best possible fight for him to take, but it will not get the same response that a Mayweather-Pacquiao fight would get. I have said it before and will continue to say it. The fight the world wants to see is Floyd Maweather Jr. fight Manny Pacquiao. That’s it. And until fight fans get to see that fight, no fight fan will really be happy with any fight that pits Mayweather against anyone not named Pacquiao and the same goes for Manny Pacquiao.
Floyd Mayweather Jr joined ESPN 980 in Washington D.C. with the Sports Fix in Miami on Friday at Super Bowl Radio Row to talk about why the Manny Pacquiao fight got cancelled, why he demanded a drug test, and what he thinks of the fight against Shane Mosley.
On why the Manny Pacquiao fight is not going to happen:
“Manny Pacquiao didn’t want to take a 25 million dollar drug test. I had a clause that I wanted and he had a clause that he wanted. His clause, what he wanted, was every pound that I weighed over 147, they wanted me to pay ten million dollars. I said no problem, each pound I’ll pay ten million dollars. My clause for him was for us both to take random drug tests. The only thing that I’m trying to do is clean up sports period.”
On why he demanded a drug test:
“Because in the past, at first you have fighters in the past that didn’t take HIV tests, now all fighters gotta take HIV tests. At one time, you weighed in the day of the fight, now you weigh in the day before the fight. Now you gotta take all different types of tests leading up to the fight. So why not? Out with the old and in with the new. We have to change. Everything has to change.”
On Manny Pacquiao not agreeing to the testing:
“He asked me to do one thing and I asked him to do another thing. The thing is this, a fighter before asked me ‘Floyd if you weigh this much over will you pay?’ I said yes. We’ve done it in the past. Simple as that. I asked him to do one thing. He had something that he wanted me to do and I had something that I wanted him to do. He didn’t live up to his end of the bargain. I lived up to my end of the bargain.”
On people believing that Manny Pacquiao is now the best fighter pound-for-pound:
“Everybody is entitled to their own opinion. I live my life the way I live my life and I’m happy with what I do. I live for Floyd Maywetaher. I don’t live for the fans. I love the fans but I live for myself. Self preservation is first. I must be happy first before I can make anybody else happy.”
On the fight against Shane Mosley:
“I was trying to fight Shane Mosley back in 1999 when Shane Mosley was undefeated. That’s what the fans fail to realize. Even in the sport of boxing, people get things mixed up. In the sport of boxing, if you start off good in your career, you’ll be good all the way till the end of your career or you start off good and you decline as you get older. You go downhill as you get older. You just don’t start off ordinary, like Manny Pacquiao, and then once you get over 25 or 26 years old, you become just extraordinary. It doesn’t work like that. So I just want to know what is it really? That’s all I want to know, what is it really?
